Officials from the Obama Administration have now released some data from the start of open enrollment.
Recently, the Obama administration released the announcement about the first week of open enrollment for health insurance shopping on the federal exchange website, and revealed that over one million people across the country had already submitted their applications within the very first week.
Among those who had submitted their applications under the Affordable Care Act, 45 percent had chosen plans.
Nearly half of the applications received during the first week on the HealthCare.gov website showed that those who had submitted them had already selected the health insurance plans that they wished to purchase. This also revealed that the federal insurance exchange website was indeed working, which had not been the case in October 2013 when it had originally opened its doors to sell the required coverage to Americans.
This year’s first week saw three times as many people choosing their health insurance than October and November 2013 combined.
While the federal insurance marketplace website wasn’t working very well when it first opened in 2013, it still shows that there has been considerable progress this year, as one week has accomplished more this year than two months last year. According to the secretary of Health and Human Services, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, “We are off to a solid start.” That said, she also stated that “we’ve got a lot of work to do every day between now and Feb. 15,” which is the date on which the open enrollment period (which started November 15) comes to an end.
During the week that ran from November 15 through November 21, the Obama administration has stated that there were a total of 1,032,129 applications that were submitted through the federal exchange, alone (this does not include the figures from states that are running their own insurance exchanges). Among those who had submitted their applications through HealthCare.gov, there were 462,125 people who had selected the health plans that they wished to purchase through the exchange.
Some of the applications that were submitted were from people who did not yet have health insurance, while some were from people who already had coverage and who were renewing or purchasing a different plan.
