Nearly 10 million Americans have enrolled in health coverage on the Obamacare insurance exchanges with less than two weeks to go in the signup season, the Obama administration said Wednesday.
Officials haven’t said whether some Americans might be allowed to sign up after the Feb. 15 deadline, and they didn’t clarify that this week, either. “Consumers need to treat February as their last chance to get coverage for the year,” said Andy Slavitt, deputy administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
But Slavitt did say that if shoppers on healthcare.gov have started the process of selecting a plan by the deadline, they would be allowed to complete the purchasing process even after enrollment officially ends.
The enrollment numbers released Wednesday are nationwide, with 7.5 million enrolling via healthcare.gov and the rest signing up through state-run exchanges. To meet the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of 12 million enrollees this year, the administration would need to pick up about 2 million more people in the next week and a half, although administration officials have said they don’t necessarily expect to meet that projection.
If the final days of enrollment season go anything like last year, traffic to healthcare.gov will ramp up, and wait times at the federal health insurance call center will increase. Officials said they are starting to see activity increase on both fronts and said wait times at the call center are already a few minutes long.
Last year, as many as 125,000 people were able to visit healthcare.gov at once. Slavitt said the website is prepared to handle that traffic load “and more.”
“I’m not going to predict how everything’s going to go on the final day, but we’re prepared,” Slavitt said.
Officials also said that nearly every American who enrolled in coverage last year by now has the tax form he needs to report coverage and subsidies to the IRS when filing taxes this year. More than 99 percent of the forms have been sent out, Slavitt said.
