How fast will the public exchanges start off?
Maybe not very.
Gary Cohen, director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, gave that assessment this week at a House Energy & Commerce oversight subcommittee hearing.
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Cohen spent most of the hearing defending the exchange enrollment program against charges against enrollers. But he also talked about other implementation issues.
One topic he addressed is whether the exchanges will actually open their doors by the Oct. 1 startup deadline (they will, he said), and another is how quickly the marketplaces will attract consumers.
Wall Street analysts and an Associated Press reporter have been trying to sharpen Congressional Budget Office enrollment projections, which – right now – estimate they could attract 7 million consumers next year.
The AP reporter, Kelli Kennedy, suggested that the states' own enrollment projections suggest the actual number could be much higher. Some analysts think the number could be closer to almost half that, at 4 million.
Cohen didn't offer a specific number, but he noted that the coverage sold from Oct. 1 through Dec. 15 won't take effect until the beginning of the new year.
"We don't anticipate a huge amount of enrollment in October," Cohen said.
Other benchmarks observers can use to track how well the exchanges are doing are call center response times and website performance measures, Cohen said.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
