A record number of people have already signed up for Obamacare only in the first few days of the open enrollment this year compared to the same periods in the previous years.
The extreme surge in sign-ups, which was reported by Trump Administration officials, comes after Democrat fears that enrollment would flatling after the Administration drastically slashed outreach and advertising funding fo the failed healthcare program – Obama’s signature achievement.
On the very first day of the enrollment alone, November 1st, it was reported that more than 200,000 people signed up for 2018 coverage, compared with about a 100,000 last year. More than 1 million people visited the healthcare.gov that day, compared to about 750,000 last year.
It is still too early in the process to determine whether this will result in more total signups than before, or if the fast start is just a fluke. After all, sign-ups early in the enrollment season are often people who are renewing their coverages, not necessarily new enrollees.
Standard & Poor’s forecasted last week that the enrollment could drop hugely, by as much as 1.6 million people below last year’s level of 12.2 million signups, in part due to the uncertainty from the administration’s own actions.
The enrollment period is also almost half as long this year, ending on December 15th.
But the sudden spike in the sign-ups is somewhat positive news for the supporters of the health-care law who have been worrying about its own fate under the Republican control of the Washington.
“The first few days of Open Enrollment for the Federal Health Insurance Exchange went smoothly,” said a spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which are overseeing the health-care law. “The website performed optimally and consumers easily accessed enrollment tools to compare plans and prices.”
Acting Health and Human Services Secretary Eric Hargan had also said in a speech only last week that the administration wants the sign-up period to be “as consumer friendly as it possibly could be.”
The administration cuts the outreach budget by 90 percent and had cut back on the grants to the outside groups, called navigators that usually helped the people to enroll.
Though the new enrollments began with a bang, the future of Obamacare is still under serious down and is subjected to be repealed as per the latest tax reform proposal.
