Cuts in funding to navigators, a lack of advertising, an enrollment period cut in half, curtailed website hours and premium increases caused by Trump administration denials of cost-sharing reductions have not been able to stop initial signups for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
The Hill reports that, according to a number of sources, a record number of people have signed up for ACA coverage in the first few days of open enrollment this year, compared with the number who signed up during the same period in previous years.
The record numbers, confirmed by an administration official, come despite Republican efforts to "implode" the health care bill, which they have unsuccessfully sought to repeal and replace in numerous efforts earlier this year.
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Democrats had feared that the roadblocks would successfully cut enrollments, but so far that hasn't happened. And that's cheering news for the ACA's supporters, who have watched the intensifying efforts by the administration to cut the legs out from under the law.
Just on the first day of enrollment, Nov. 1, the report says one source close to the process said that more than 200,000 people selected a plan for 2018, compared with about 100,000 last year. Further, the source also said that more than 1 million people visited healthcare.gov that day, compared with last year's approximately 750,000 last year.
While it's still too early to tell how the full signup season will go—sign-ups early in the enrollment season are often people renewing their coverage, not new enrollees—so far the numbers are way ahead of a Standard & Poor's forecast that enrollment could drop by as much as 1.6 million people below last year's level of 12.2 million signups, partially because of the uncertainty resulting from the administration's actions.
"The first few days of Open Enrollment for the Federal Health Insurance Exchange went smoothly," a spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the health care law, said in the report. "The website performed optimally and consumers easily accessed enrollment tools to compare plans and prices."
Although Acting Health and Human Services Secretary Eric Hargan said in a speech that the administration wants the signup period to be "as consumer friendly as possible," before enrollment began for 2017 the administration slashed the outreach budget by 90 percent and cut back on grants to outside groups, called navigators, that help people enroll. And insurers pulled out of multiple state marketplaces or hiked rates after Trump refused to make CSR payments that help cut costs for companies covering those who need more, and more costly, care.
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