ACA Health Insurance Exchange Programs Increase Signups 17%
The biggest exchange, HealthCare.gov, has registered almost 62,000 coverage agents for 2022.
Managers of the public health insurance supermarkets say business has been great so far this year.
The Affordable Care Act health insurance exchange system has recorded 13.6 million signups for 2022 coverage through Dec. 15, up 17% from the signup total for 2021 coverage recorded a year earlier, according to officials with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
America’s Health Insurance Supermarkets
The ACA exchange system is an eight-year-old family of websites that sell standardized commercial health insurance policies to individuals and small employers.
Exchange plan enrollees can use federal ACA premium tax credit subsidies to pay some, all or part of the premiums.
HealthCare.gov, an arm of HHS, provides ACA exchange services in 33 states.
Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have their own locally run ACA exchange programs.
Last year, the original open enrollment period, or time when people can sign up for coverage without showing they have a special reason to be getting covered, ran from Nov. 1 through Dec. 15 in HealthCare.gov states and many states with state-based exchange programs.
This year, the open enrollment period started Nov. 1 and last until at least Jan. 15, 2022, in HealthCare.gov states and most other states.
Kentucky, Maine and New Mexico used HealthCare.gov for 2021 coverage but now have their own exchange programs for 2022 coverage.
More Numbers
Even though consumers have until January to get covered this time around, and HealthCare.gov’s market area got smaller, the HHS exchange program increased its signup count 18% this year, to 9.7 million.
State-based exchange programs increased their signup count 15%, to 3.9 million.
The administration of President Joseph Biden has used COVID-19 relief packages to provide temporary, looser eligibility rules for the ACA premium tax credit subsidies. In part because of those changes, 92% of 2022 exchange plan enrollees will qualify for the subsidies, HHS officials said.
About half of the ACA exchange plan enrollees come in through health insurance agents and brokers.
This year, the number of producers registered for the upcoming plan year increased to 61,951 as of Dec. 20, up 15% from the number of producers registered for the plan year by Dec. 20, 2021, according to the HealthCare.gov producer registration database.
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