Obama health care law posts respectable sign-up season

“This year, we have 2.7 million [HealthCare.gov] customers ages 18 to 34, and the percentage of new customers in that age range is higher than last year, while the overall percentage of plan selections for customers that age remains stable”, she said.

At the end of the 2015 enrollment season, 11.7 million people were signed up, a number that dropped to 9.3 million by early fall.

“For every person insured in the exchanges there are nearly three others who have elected to remain uninsured”, says Goodman who runs the Goodman Institute for Public Policy Institute and advises many Republican politicians. About 60 percent, or 2.4 million of new enrollees, signed up by the deadline for coverage to begin on January 1, compared to about 40 percent, or 1.9 million of new enrollees past year, she said. So that gives us 13.1 million-up from 11.4 million past year.

People who are eligible for financial assistance but still don’t get insurance face rising penalties under the ACA’s so-called individual mandate.

But enrollment tends to dwindle as the year goes on.

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services reports 613,487 North Carolina residents – more than 6 percent of the state’s population – registered for a Health Insurance Marketplace coverage plan through the HealthCare.gov platform before the close of the January 31 enrollment cutoff.

Apart from this, added 400,000 people signed up for a new type of health care plan designed for those with low income.

This year was the third sign-up season for the Affordable Care Act, and different challenges emerged. “The Health Insurance Marketplace is changing people’s lives for the better”.

Even so, the latest numbers provide important signs of how the exchanges, a major feature of the 2010 health-care law, are functioning now that they are no longer new.

Health insurers overall have lost money on the health plans sold on the marketplace in part because a disproportionate number of people in poor health enrolled in the first two years.