HHS: 9.9M still paying for Obamacare coverage

The administration counted 9.9 million paying customers on Obamacare’s exchanges as of June 30, according to an enrollment update Tuesday that showed a net drop of 300,000 customers since the end of March due to nonpayment, citizenship or immigration problems or because they got covered elsewhere.

About 7.2 million people in 37 states effectuated coverage they found on the federal HealthCare.gov portal by paying their premiums, while the remaining 2.7 million maintained coverage on the handful of web-based exchanges run by individual states.

Although a net drop from March, officials cheered the fact they were still beating their self-imposed goal of 9.1 million paying customers for 2015.

“Consumers from coast-to-coast are continuing to show how important health coverage is to their families,” Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell. “Millions of Americans are benefiting from the peace of mind that comes with having quality coverage at a price they can afford as they access coverage through the Affordable Care Act’s Marketplace.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said 84 percent, or 8.3 million customers, received taxpayer subsidies to help them afford coverage. The average tax credit for those who qualified was $270 per month.

Also, more than half — 5.6 million — of enrollees on the lower end of the income scale benefited from cost-sharing reduction payments that reduce their out-of-pocket expenses.

That program is the subject of controversy in the federal courts, where a judge is mulling whether House Republicans have legal standing to sue President Obama for doling out the payments even though they zeroed out funding for the program in annual spending bills.

The numbers provided Tuesday reflect a point-in-time snapshot of signup since the formal enrollment period ended Feb. 15 with 11.7 million signups.

People who had to pay Obamacare’s tax for lacking health insurance, and wanted to duck a tougher penalty next year, got an extra six weeks to sign up earlier this year, and people who experience a life change such as marriage or having a baby can sign up outside the normal enrollment period.

Yet others will be dropped from plans for failing to pay their premium bills or making claims that do not sync up with government data, and still more may have left the marketplace and taken up coverage through a new job or separate government program.

Officials said 306,000 people lost their coverage between April 1 and June 30 because they couldn’t produce adequate documentation to prove their citizenship or immigration status, bringing the total number of people who’ve lost 2015 plan-year coverage for those reasons to 423,000.

Officials said they adjusted the amount of subsidy or cost-sharing payments for 734,000 households because of inconsistencies with between the amounts and their actual household income between April 1 and June 30.

For 2015 overall, the marketplace has adjusted payments for 967,000 households due to income inconsistencies.