Obamacare is working and here to stay, the administration declared Wednesday in extolling last-minute activity that pushed signups to 11.4 million nationwide, including 8.6 million from the HealthCare.gov marketplace that serves 37 states and is under threat at the Supreme Court.
Preliminary data shows that 2.8 million customers signed up on the insurance portals run by 13 states and the District of Columbia, although a patchwork of enrollment deadlines in those states will force the administration to update their data in the coming days or weeks.
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said the three-month enrollment period that ended Sunday had been a strong one, buoyed by a last-minute push that set a single-day enrollment record over the weekend.
She also argued the law has taken root across the country, even as Republican lawmakers and looming court challenges threaten to unravel it.
“The Affordable Care Act is now an important part of the everyday lives of millions of Americans,” she said. “They finally have the financial and health security that comes with affordable health coverage.”
The 2015 enrollment period began Nov. 15 and officially ended Sunday, although customers standing “in line” at the deadline have been given extra time to finish up.
Mrs. Burwell revealed the preliminary tally of 11.4 enrollees to President Obama in a White House video posted to Facebook late Tuesday.
“It gives you some sense of how hungry people were out there for affordable, accessible health insurance,” Mr. Obama says in the clip. “And that’s really the top-line message. The Affordable Care Act is working. It’s working a little bit better than we anticipated — certainly, I think, working a lot better than some of the critics talked about early on.”
The figures come with some caveats.
It is unclear how many people will actually pay their premiums and keep their coverage during the year, and 200,000 of the people in Thursday’s data are set to be removed from the rolls because they did not prove their immigration or citizenship status with appropriate documentation.
The administration set a modest goal of 9.1 million effectuated enrollees for 2015, or short of congressional budget estimates that set the bar at 12 million.
HHS hasn’t said whether it plans to extend a special enrollment period on HealthCare.gov to people who must pay a tax penalty for lacking insurance in 2014.
Taxes are not due until April 15, and filers who didn’t realize they flouted Obamacare’s “individual mandate” have missed the Feb. 15 deadline to sign up and avoid even greater penalties in 2015.
Some state-run exchange aren’t waiting for federal officials to make the first move.
Washington State’s exchange said its penalty payers can still enroll until April 17, and Minnesota’s portal announced Wednesday that people who pay the penalty in 2014 can enroll between March 1 and April 30.
Meanwhile, the Republican-majority Congress is trying to repeal and replace the law by leveraging a Supreme Court decision, due by June, that could blow a hole through Obamacare by invalidating the law’s premium tax credits on the federal exchange.
Mrs. Burwell on Wednesday highlighted heavy enrollment in Florida, Texas, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — states where customers would lose their subsidies if the court rules against the administration in the case, King v. Burwell.
She has not revealed any contingency plans to deal with an adverse ruling in the case, insisting that the administration should prevail before the justices.
The subsidies have averaged $268 per month, per customer, this year on the federal exchange.
Without the assistance, many customers would drop coverage, sending the law’s fragile economics into a nosedive.
More broadly, critics say Obamacare is forcing Americans to pay more and forfeit coverage and doctors they liked.
They also say the White House should not take credit for high enrollment figures that were coerced, in a sense, by the mandate requiring most Americans to hold health insurance.
But for now, the administration is taking a victory lap.
“While we have more work to do, the numbers tell the story, and the story is clear,” Mrs. Burwell said. “The Affordable Care Act is working, and families, businesses, and taxpayers are all better off as a result.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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