President Obama
President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law could be on the chopping block when his successor, Donald Trump, takes office, but 2017 enrollment nevertheless appears strong.
(Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Associated P{ress)
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Obamacare enrollment may be up for 2017 compared with 2016, both nationally and in Ohio, despite uncertainty over the insurance program's future under President-elect Donald Trump, new figures show.
More data will come in, as will more enrollments, in coming weeks. But for coverage starting Jan. 1, arranged by individuals through an open-enrollment process that ended at midnight Monday, the numbers were:
- 6.4 million people nationally enrolled through Healthcare.gov, up by 400,000 over this point last year.
- 165,046 of them were in Ohio, compared with 144,850 a year ago.
These early numbers, released Wednesday afternoon by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, are consistent with the Obama administration's earlier projections of higher enrollment in 2017.
They only include people who used the Internet or phone to enroll or re-enroll in policies, so they do not count automatic re-enrollments from people keeping their current policies and using automatic rollovers. Those numbers won't be tallied for a couple of weeks, HHS said.
Furthermore, enrollment continues through Jan. 31 for coverage starting in February.
While these numbers represent people or families who said they intend to be covered, they will only have health coverage if they pay their premiums. A majority will get taxpayer subsidies to help.
HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said the numbers show that interest in -- and the need for -- the healthcare insurance program remains high, despite attempts that could succeed in dismantling it under Trump in 2017.
On a conference call with reporters, she said that "we're going to do a hard push" to make sure that additional people who need health coverage enroll.
Trump, a Republican who takes office Jan. 20, says he wants to repeal and replace the signature law of his predecessor, President Barack Obama, a Democrat. Trump already has a willing majority in both houses of Congress.
Obamacare, formally called the Affordable Care Act, requires most Americans to have health coverage -- through their employers, through individual policies issued by insurers but facilitated through HHS and states, or through Medicaid a joint federal-state program for low income Americans that Obamacare expanded to cover more people. Those age 65 and older can get coverage through the federal Medicare program, as they have for decades.
Despite the appeal of broad healthcare coverage, Obamacare has suffered not only from criticism over its mandate to get insured or pay a fine, which riles conservatives as counter to individual freedoms. It also has forced insurance premiums up for some as insurance companies seek ways to balance out their costs.
And it has prompted some insurers to dip into the market and then exit in a year or two, saying their costs of paying for medical care results in them losing money.
As insurers leave, customers must find replacement policies. In theory, that could account for a surge in policy shopping in recent weeks -- a surge that could be countered with lower figures for automatic renewals when those figures are announced.
But Burwell and Andy Slavitt, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said they considered such a possibility and don't think it will happen, based on past patterns of how and when people enroll and re-enroll.
"So overall, enrollment is running ahead of last year's numbers," Burwell said.