The Obama administration this week is slated to release eagerly awaited insurance enrollment numbers for its health care law — a figure it has already signaled will be much lower than expected.
In a possible indication of just how low, The Wall Street Journal — citing information from two unnamed people it said were familiar with the troubled healthcare.gov web site — reported Monday that health insurance sign-ups on the troubled online portal had totaled 50,000 in October. That is just one-tenth of the number predicted before the site’s rocky launch.
Policy experts and congressional aides maintain that a low number of successful sign-ups will only underscore the huge number of people believed to be waiting for a chance to obtain benefits. But it will also likely bolster calls by Republicans to halt the law’s implementation at least until the site can be repaired.
The administration has promised to have healthcare.gov — which serves the 36 states that chose not to launch their own health care exchanges —running smoothly by the end of November. But it has repeatedly acknowledged it is encountering new technical problems.
The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act aims to provide health benefits to millions of uninsured Americans. It mandates that most Americans be enrolled for health insurance by March 31 or pay a penalty.
“There’s going to be a huge crunch. It’s a big choke point,” said James Capretta of the conservative Ethics & Public Policy Center. “The risk is people having lapses in coverage because the system can’t handle the volume, which would be a huge political problem for the administration.”
In addition to giving an overall idea of how many people have signed up, analysts say, the numbers to be released on a yet-unspecified day this this week should also offer an early indication of whether the law is proving more popular with poor people who qualify for expanded Medicaid coverage or with working-class families eligible for subsidized private insurance.
But administration officials have not said whether the data will provide answers to other important questions, including whether young, healthy adults, needed by insurers to offset the cost of providing policies for older people with greater health risks, are signing up.
Prior to the launch troubles, as many as 7 million Americans were expected to sign up for private health insurance offered through the online marketplaces for 2014. An additional 9 million were expected to enroll in an expanded Medicaid program for the poor by March 31, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
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