Nearly 1 million additional people shopped for health insurance and picked a plan on the federally run Obamacare exchanges ever since the regular signup season ended, the Obama administration said Thursday.
But officials didn’t say how many of those new possible enrollees have actually paid for an insurance plan yet.
The 2015 enrollment period concluded in February, but consumers who experienced a qualifying major life change, like getting married or having a baby, were still able to sign up after that. About 944,000 people selected a plan on healthcare.gov between Feb. 23 and June 30, the Department of Health and Human Services said on Thursday.
HHS didn’t include data on the 13 states plus the District of Columbia, which are running their own exchanges.
“Life changes are often impossible to predict, but access to affordable and quality healthcare coverage should never be,” said healthcare.gov CEO Kevin Counihan, in a statement. “So far this year, nearly 950,000 people have gained the peace of mind that comes with access to coverage by taking advantage of a special enrollment period, providing us with further evidence that the Health Insurance Marketplace is working for America’s families.”
Other life events that qualify a person to enroll beyond the regular season include losing health coverage or losing Medicaid eligibility. Fifty percent of the new plan selections were due to people losing their existing plans.
Forty-seven percent were people younger than 34 years old, a key demographic the administration has targeted for enrolling in Obamacare coverage because younger, healthier people can help lower overall premiums.
Officials have said between 80 and 90 percent of people who select a plan will eventually buy it. At the end of the last regular enrollment period, 11.7 million people selected a plan, and that 10.2 million people actually purchased those plans.
Based on that trend, another 800,000 or so people may soon be added to that tally through the special enrollment period. The next enrollment season starts Nov. 1.
