MMarch 25 (Bloomberg) -- ore than 1.1 million people visited the federal Obamacare website yesterday, the second most ever, as Americans try to beat a March 31 deadline to obtain health insurance or risk a fine.
Under the health-care law, Americans who aren’t insured by the end of March may have to pay a penalty equal to 1 percent of their income. The federal turnout was mirrored in states. Washington’s exchange enrolled 12,000 people last week and almost 1,200 signed up yesterday in Connecticut, the states reported.
“The expected surge in last-minute enrollments has begun,” said Richard Onizuka, the chief executive officer for the Olympia-based Washington Health Benefit Exchange.
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About 5 million people enrolled in private plans through March 17 using government health exchanges created by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration has said. With a last-minute surge, the U.S. effort may meet or exceed 6 million, the most recent estimate of the Congressional Budget Office and a politically important goal for President Barack Obama, who faces continuing criticism from political foes that the law is not viable.
Obama administration officials were deployed across the country to help push enrollment in advance of the deadline.
Kathleen Sebelius, the health department secretary, visited Montclair State University in New Jersey to observe local enrollment efforts, while Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett was to meet with local officials in Los Angeles at an event at a community health clinic, according to a White House statement.
Republican Questions
At the same time, Republicans have said the Obama administration is over-reporting the number of people who have enrolled because they don’t yet know how many Americans have paid for coverage. Customers can’t complete enrollment until they pay their first premium to insurers.
Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee said today in a letter to Sebelius that administration regulatory guidance to insurers shows “there is specific information about who has paid their premium” collected by the government. They asked her to provide it to them “immediately.”
The health-care law seeks to cover many of the nation’s 48 million uninsured people, either through private plans sold on the exchanges -- often with the help of government subsidies to reduce premiums -- or expanded Medicaid programs in about half the states.
“We are thrilled to see a surge of activity, with near- record levels of traffic on healthCare.gov in recent days,” Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in an e-mail. “Our systems are ready to handle these high volumes in the remaining six days before the deadline.”
Connecticut, Washington
Kevin Counihan, the chief executive officer of Connecticut’s exchange, said on Twitter that more than 4,000 people had signed up yesterday for private health plans and Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor. .
The website turnout in Washington state was four times the weekly enrollment average, the group running the online exchange said in a statement. Since Oct. 1, more than 125,000 state residents have enrolled in private health plans through the exchange, according to the statement.
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