Obamacare sign-ups are doing better than last year after a record number of existing customers logged in to shop around for new plans ahead of 2016, the administration said Wednesday.
Three out of five users who obtained coverage in 2015, or 3.6 million out of 6 million customers, came back to the federal HealthCare.gov website over the last few months and picked out plans for the coming year, the Health and Human Services Department said.
That’s up from 40 percent from the number who did so in 2014, and the administration said the results signaled a strong enthusiasm for Obamacare and its health insurance market exchanges.
“As 2015 comes to an end, I am encouraged to see Marketplace consumers showing how engaged they are with their health coverage,” HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said.
The 40 percent who didn’t pick a plan this year have been automatically re-enrolled by the government into their existing coverage or a similar plan, so they keep insurance as 2016 begins, although the administration and private experts have urged enrollees to shop around to improve their chances of getting a good deal.
Overall, enrollment is running smoothly, HHS said, with 2.5 million new customers signing up on the federal exchange, along with the 6 million returning customers.
SEE ALSO: Health care costs to rise without any benefit cuts
Americans have until the end of January to sign up for a plan in 2016.
Florida is leading the way with about 1.6 million sign-ups, followed by Texas, where nearly 1.1 million residents have selected a health plan.
The numbers only cover states that rely on the federal exchange website. Final figures for the dozen states, plus D.C., that run their own exchanges are still to come, and will boost the enrollment totals even higher.
The administration has set a modest goal of 10 million paying customers by the end of the 2016 plan year, and it appears HHS will meet that goal — although enrollment can rise and fall throughout the year, as customers drop out due to non-payment or other reasons, and new ones enroll because they got married or had another life event that qualified them for a special enrollment period.
In the meantime, the overhaul faces a series of political and fiscal challenges.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said the chamber next week will approve Senate changes to a fast-track budget bill that repeals most of Obamacare while defunding Planned Parenthood over its abortion practices.
SEE ALSO: Planned Parenthood’s patients, services drop as its federal funding jumps: report
President Obama is considered certain to veto the bill — the first to repeal of his signature law and actually reach his desk — though the GOP views the process as a test run for 2017, when it hopes to repeal the law with a Republican president and majorities in both halls of Congress.
Bills produced by the process, known as budget reconciliation, cannot be filibustered in Senate, so it only needs to cling to a slim majority in the 2016 contests.
Meanwhile, Obamacare customers in some part of the country are reporting “sticker shock” over year-to-year premium increases on the exchanges, and the nation’s largest insurer, UnitedHealth Group, recently said it is losing money from a sicker-than-expected customer base on the exchanges and may pull out by 2017.
The administration remains bullish about the coming year, however, citing “unprecedented demand” for exchange coverage in recent weeks and slightly younger customer base.
Under Obamacare, insurers can no longer deny coverage to sicker customers with pre-existing medical conditions, so they must raise premiums if their risk on the exchanges is not offset by younger, healthier customers.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.