The Affordable Care Act public exchange programs may still have a shot at beating last year's ACA open enrollment period plan signup figures.
The open enrollment period for 2020 individual major medical coverage began Nov. 1 in most of the country, and it's set to end Sunday in most of the country.
As of last Saturday, the ACA exchange programs had announced about 6.1 million signups, according to figures compiled by ACASignups.net, an ACA program tracking blog.
In mid-November, signup activity appeared to be about 30% lower than it was at the same point in the open enrollment period for 2019 coverage.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' HealthCare.gov have now helped 3.9 million people sign up for coverage, they seem to be close to matching its numbers for the 2019 open enrollment period, according to the ACASignups.net data.
The District of Columbia and 12 states run their own exchange programs. The locally run exchange programs have helped about 2.2 million people apply to get covered. The locally run exchanges seem to have narrowed their year-over-year signup drop to about 22%, from close to 50% in mid-November.
Congress created the ACA public exchange system to try to give people an easy way to shop for health coverage, and to distribute ACA premium tax credit subsidies. The system came to life in late 2013, with the first coverage sold taking effect Jan. 1, 2014.
The Big Enrollment Pictures
Charles Gaba, the editor of ACASignups.net, reported that he still had no enrollment data, as of Saturday, for five of the 13 locally run public exchange programs: the programs for the District of Columbia, Idaho, Maryland, Rhode Island and Vermont.
HHS cut its marketing spending sharply this year, but it has helped outside web brokers connect more directly with its computers.