26,794 Select Plan on the Federal Exchange, Far Below Earlier Estimates
MacIver News Service | November 13, 2013
[Madison, Wisc…] Only 877 people selected a health care plan on the Obamacare marketplace in Wisconsin during the first month of enrollment according to a release from the Department of Health and Humans Services on Wednesday.HHS released nationwide enrollment data from October 1st to November 2nd for states both on the federal exchange and state run exchanges. In total, just over 100,000 people were able to select a health insurance plan, but only a quarter of that was from the federal exchange website, HealthCare.gov.
The disastrous rollout of Obamacare has caused enrollment numbers to be far lower than expected. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office expected seven million people to have healthcare through the marketplaces in 2014. That would mean that about 1.2 million people would have to sign up each month of the enrollment period. At 106,185 nationwide in the first month, the actual numbers are much lower.
Another problem with the breakdown of health care sign-ups is that HHS did not separate individuals who have purchased insurance and those that have just selected a plan. So, it could be the case that far fewer than 877 have actually purchased health insurance on the marketplace in Wisconsin.
The MacIver News Service (MNS) tried to find out where individual sign ups came from in the Badger State and the age of enrollees, but HHS has not released that information.
“We have prioritized reporting of the metrics which provide the most accurate snapshot of Marketplace enrollment-related activity at this time,” Emma Sandoe, a spokesperson for HHS, told MNS.
Other states fared even worse than Wisconsin when it came to people that actually chose a plan. Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming all had less than 100 people select a plan in the first month.
The HHS release also reads, “During an enrollment-related transaction, if a consumer clicks either the ‘Enroll’ or the ‘Cancel’ button more than once, the system may improperly generate multiple transactions.” So, anyone that continued to press “Enroll” over and over when the website froze may have created more than one sign up.
The full release from HHS is available here.