Last week, the Obama administration announce its intention to delay next year’s open enrollment period for individual insurance coverage from October 15, 2014 to November 15, 2014 with the closing date moving from December 7, 2014 to January 15, 2015. Although the change moves the beginning date past the 2014 elections, the administration denied any political motivation, rather saying that insurers needed more time to evaluate results from 2014 before proposing plans and premiums for the coming year. On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released the proposed date changes along with a number of other rule revisions.  

As is always the case with proposed regulations, the HHS document solicits comments on the revisions.  In this case, the window for comments is 30 days from the date the changes are posted in the Federal Register.  However, despite the comment solicitation period, HHS already revised the dates advertised to consumers at Healthcare.gov.  As recently as November 20, the old dates were listed [cached page]: