Georgia sign-ups for 2019 Affordable Care Act health insurance plans are lagging behind last year’s pace, according to federal data released for the first four weeks of open enrollment.
Open enrollment still has a ways to go, at least until Dec. 15.
The lag in sign-ups here is slight, perhaps just a couple thousand fewer so far, so it’s hard to know what it means until enrollment is completed, said Bill Custer, a health finance analyst at Georgia State University. But it might be a result of less publicity and help for customers this year.
The federal government under President Barack Obama allocated $3.7 million for “navigator” assistance in Georgia to groups that guide customers to choose a plan on healthcare.gov, the federal website. Last year, the Trump administration cut that to $1.4 million, and it eliminated the budget for television advertising. This year it cut navigation funding in the state to $499,995.
“Just because we’re doing the same as last year doesn’t mean there wasn’t the potential for doing a lot better had there been consistent marketing,” Custer said. He points out that plan prices this year have finally stabilized. Also, news about the program has been comparatively quiet. Last year, prices jumped 50 percent or more, and negative publicity about the program from Washington was relentless.
“Now just holding the status quo is a credit to the stabilization of the markets,” Custer said.
Last year, experts feared all that turmoil at the federal level — including a bid in Congress that fell just short of eliminating the program — would lead to a collapse in sign-ups. But that didn't happen. Researchers found that news coverage of the fights had had the effect of actually publicizing the open enrollment period, helping people out. In the end, 481,000 Georgians enrolled in plans for this year, just a 2.6 percent dip from the previous year.
Navigators knew that wouldn’t be the same this year. They also knew that ongoing news coverage of election campaigns this year would crowd out news about open enrollment.
Open enrollment is slated to end Dec. 15 unless the government announces an extension for Georgia as a result of the emergency declaration earlier this year for Hurricane Michael.
WEEK FOUR
Open enrollment is underway on the Affordable Care Aact marketplace for insurance plans that kick in Jan. 1, and at the end of the fourth week more than 100,000 Georgians have already signed up. To compare with last year, the four-week figures released this year cover one fewer day than last year’s; but even accounting for that, there’s still a slight lag behind last year’s pace. Last year was the first year that the enrollment period was cut in half, to six weeks total.
2017: 146,899
2018: 139,645
Source: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
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