With just five weeks to go before Obamacare enrollment period comes to an end, federal officials revealed that about 4 million people have signed up for health insurance plans that are being sold under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).The new target for Obamacare comes with various warnings that could affect the peoples view about success or failure of the program. The target includes how many people actually pay for their coverage and how far the registrations are lagging in terms of initial estimates.
The Obama administration has detached itself from its own reporting of Obamacare registration statistics as it looks to see how the healthcare reforms could be improved.
Obamacare’s number of registrants was revealed by Marilyn Tavenner’s blog post, the administrator of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
According to her, the new Affordable Care Act (ACA) is benefiting the Americans. She said that around 4 million people have signed up for private health insurance plans through the state-run marketplace. However, she didn’t disclose the number of people who have paid premium for the first month as a requirement for registration. According to insurance experts, about 20% of those who have registered did not pay for their plans.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had earlier predicted that in February 2014, about 1.27 million people will register for Obamacare. In a February 2014 interview, President of Health Policy and Strategy Associates in Washington, Robert Laszewski said that Obamacare registration is falling off significantly.
CBO made its predictions before the launch of HealthCare.gov which famously crashed for a good period of 2 months after its launch due to various unidentified problems, which directly affected the registration process. Affordable Care Act exchange websites in Maryland and Oregon also suffered similar issues with their portals which contributed to the overall program collapse.
CBO had originally predicted that around 7 million people would register for Obamacare by the end of March 2014.
Recently, the US vice president Joe Biden said, "We may not get to 7 million, but if we get to 5 or 6 million, that's a hell of a start."
On Tuesday, February 25, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius said that the Obama administration never considered CBO’s estimated figures as realistic. According to her, it was just a forecast and the research methodology behind it was unclear.
March 31 is the deadline by which the Americans must have a health insurance or they will face a tax penalty that totals to 1% of their adjusted gross income or $95, whichever is higher.
It may be a good initiative by the Obama administration, however, it still remains to be seen whether they are able to achieve their targets come end of March.