Obamacare:
Affordable Care Act still faces issues and uncertainty.
Health plan sign-ups reach 12.7 million.
WASHINGTON — Still facing political jeopardy, President Barack Obama’s health care law signed up about a million more people this year than last , according to fifigures released Thursday by the administration.
About 12.7 million people signed up for individual private insurance polic ies or renewed their coverage for 2016, said Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell. That means Republicans running in this year’s elections may fifind it harder to deliver on their promise of repeal, while Democrats may yet be able to tap the newly insured as a voting constituency.
The 2016 enrollment number surpassed last year’s mark of nearly 11.7 million sign-ups.
“It’s not the unequivocal success that Obamacare advocates had hoped for, but also not the disaster that critics thought could make it a talking point on the campaign trail,” Larry Levitt, of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, said.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, called the health law’s coverage “unpopular, unaffordable and unworkable.”
Expec t ations were low at the start of open enrollment Nov. 1. Premiums have been going up, and many of the remaining uninsured are considered skeptics.
The 12.7 million num- ber falls right in the middle of the administration’s projection of 11 million to 14 million initial enrollments through HealthCare.gov and state-run counterparts.
Separately, another 400,000 signed up in a new kind of health law plan for low-income peo-ple. Minnesota and New York are the fifirst states to offer it.
Enrollment tends to dwindle over the year. Some people leave for employer coverage while other customers can’t keep up with the costs. Burwell has set customer retention as the ultimate goal. Her target is 10 million consumers still signed up and paying premiums at the end of the year. The administration seems on track to end Obama’s fifinal year in offiice just above that goal, said Avalere Health, a research and consulting firm.
This year was the third sign-up season for the Affordable Care Act, and different challenges emerged. The problem wasn’t the HealthCare. gov website. The issues involved the cost of coverage, the motivations of millions of people who remain uninsured, and the complexity.
Premiums went up for the private, taxpayer-subsidized coverage sold through HealthCare.gov and state insurance markets.