The challenges in convincing more people to buy Obamacare plans are apparent as the law’s third enrollment season comes to a close this weekend.
While the Obama administration appears poised to reach its modest 2016 enrollment goal of 10 million, it’s not clear whether enough people will pick plans and pay for them throughout the year to meet the Congressional Budget Office’s most recent projection of 13 million.
That’s largely because the remaining uninsured are a hard-to-reach population that knows little about the process despite efforts by the administration and Obamacare advocates to spread the word.
Just 15 percent of the uninsured can correctly identify that the enrollment deadline is Sunday, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Thursday found. More than 70 percent of respondents said they haven’t tried to figure out whether they qualify for Medicaid, and 8 in 10 said they haven’t looked into whether they qualify for financial help to buy a plan through the Obamacare marketplaces.
More Obamacare outreach could be needed, at least according to the Kaiser poll results. Sixty-seven percent of the uninsured said they haven’t been contacted about signing up for coverage and 57 percent said they haven’t tried to get more information on their own.
And while nearly half the uninsured said they anticipate having to pay a fine for not having insurance, only 1 percent correctly named the fine amount as $695 per person or 2.5 percent of household income.
“Many uninsured are largely disengaged from the healthcare system and opportunities for coverage, with large majorities being unaware of the date for the upcoming deadline to enroll or of the fine for not having health insurance in 2016,” the Kaiser authors wrote.
The findings underscore a truth the Obama administration has emphasized as it has tried to tamp down enrollment expectations this year — that the uninsured Americans who wanted coverage bought it during the first two enrollment seasons. The rest of the population, people who either don’t want coverage or don’t think they can afford it, is much harder to convince.
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said at the start of enrollment that the goal is to have 10 million Americans with paid-for coverage in 2016 — a number much lower than the 21 million enrollees the CBO projected a few years ago.
The CBO this week downgraded its projection to 13 million enrollees this year, but it’s still not clear whether that number will be reached. The administration announced early in January that 11 million people had signed up so far, but enrollment has crawled for the rest of the month.
The administration announced Wednesday that just 103,000 more people have selected plans on healthcare.gov in the past week, making about 300,000 people to sign up in the federal-run marketplace this month.
“We are focused on making sure people know that financial help is available, the deadline is fast approaching and that we’re here to help them enroll — so that they don’t risk having to pay a penalty of $695 or more for not having health insurance,” Burwell said.
And to achieve 13 million paying customers, the CBO’s current projection, a larger number of people would have to initially sign up, since a number of customers will drop off during the year if they can’t keep paying for their plans or decide they just don’t want to.
