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February 03, 2017 at 10:17 AM
HealthCare.gov pushed 2017 exchange plan selection activity close to 2016 levels, in spite of a wave of issuer withdrawals and big premium increases.
Managers of the Affordable Care Act exchange plan enrollment system say it ended the individual open enrollment period for 2017 with plan selection information for 9.2 million people.
Related: ACA definitions: Enrollment period basics
That was down 4.2 percent from the plan selector count recorded a year earlier, at the end of the open enrollment period for 2016.
About 3 million of the 2017 users are new to the system. About 6.2 million are people who used HealthCare.gov plans in 2016 and are continuing to use HealthCare.gov plans this year.
Florida and Texas continued to be the biggest sources of HealthCare.gov activity. Florida accounted for 1.8 million of the system’s 2017 users, and Texas accounted for 1.2 million of the users.
Related: 5 state-based exchange steps toward 2017
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services set up HealthCare.gov to provide ACA enrollment and account administration services for states that were unable or unwilling to handle the job themselves. HHS reports on plan selection activity, rather than sales activity, because it classifies a transaction as a true sale only after a consumer makes at least one premium payment.
In the past, about 85 percent of the people who have selected exchange plan coverage have put the coverage into effect.
The individual major medical open enrollment period for 2017 started Nov. 1 and ended Tuesday in most of the country. Managers of the state-based exchanges in California, Colorado and Minnesota gave consumers who had started the enrollment process by Tuesday a few more days to complete the plan selection process.
About 3 million of the 2017 HealthCare.gov users are new to the system. (Photo: iStock)
