Federal ACA Marketplace Enrollment Lagging
KFF Health News December 19, 2024
It’s open enrollment season for the Affordable Care Act — and there are ongoing challenges.
First up, enrollment.
New and returning sign-ups through healthcare.gov — the federal marketplace that serves 31 states — are well below last year’s rate. New enrollments were just over 730,000 in early December, compared with 1.5 million at the same time last year.
To give consumers in those states more time to enroll, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services extended the deadline to Wednesday to sign up for coverage that starts Jan. 1. (Open enrollment itself ends in most states on Jan. 15, for coverage that would begin Feb. 1.)
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is seeking to put on hold an order by a...