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The number of people who signed up for health insurance in the federal marketplace that serves most states dipped this year to 9.2 million, the Trump administration said Friday, as consumers struggled with confusion over the future of the Affordable Care Act. That represents a decline of more than 4 percent from the total of 9.63 million people who signed up through HealthCare.gov at this time last year. (Pear, 2/3)

The report doesn't include figures from 11 states that run their own health insurance markets — including California and New York — so the final national number will be higher. But the preliminary report is being closely watched, because President Donald Trump and the GOP-led Congress have vowed to repeal the Obama-era health law and replace it with a plan yet to emerge. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 2/3)

Officials framed the numbers by highlighting negative points about ObamaCare, an obvious contrast with the Obama administration. “Obamacare has failed the American people, with one broken promise after another,” Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Matt Lloyd said in a statement accompanying the numbers. (Sullivan, 2/3)

The absence of the customary deadline surge “could very well be the result of tremendous confusion and uncertainty surrounding the future of the health law, as well as the last-minute pulling of some outreach advertising,” said Larry Levitt, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. (Goldstein, 2/3)

States with the biggest declines in sign-ups included ones where health insurers pulled out of the markets, leaving consumers with fewer choices. In Mississippi, Alaska, Georgia, Missouri and other states, insurers left the program or scaled back, while premiums climbed. (Tracer, 2/3)

The figures are likely to further fuel the fight over the effectiveness of the health law known as Obamacare—with opponents pointing to the declining year-over-year enrollment as a sign of the law’s failure, and supporters saying the law succeeded at expanding coverage to broad swaths of the population, with an estimated 22 million people gaining coverage through the exchanges and the expansion of Medicaid. (Hackman, 2/3)

[T]he dramatic drop-off in the last two weeks fed rising criticism that the Trump administration is sabotaging the marketplaces to strengthen its political argument that the law must be scrapped. “There is no doubt that enrollment would have been even higher if not for the uncertainty caused by political attacks on the law, and the Trump administration’s decision not to provide consumers with all of the resources and support available to help them enroll,” said Anne Filipic, president of Enroll America, which helps consumers sign up for coverage. (Levey, 2/3)

Opponents of the law said the latest figures are further evidence that the health care law is falling apart. “Enrollment numbers are down and costs are up. These cost hikes are exactly the reason why Republicans are committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Friday. (Pradhan, 2/3)

Earlier in 2017, the Obama administration had highlighted strong and increasing demand for plans on HealthCare.gov. By Jan. 14, about 8.8 million Americans had signed up for 2017 insurance coverage using the site, about 100,000 more than at a similar time in 2016. (Mershon, 2/3)

Plan selection this year between Jan. 15 and Jan. 31 was 376,260. By comparison, last year 686,708 peopled signed up in the final week alone. (Deam, 2/3)

As President Donald J. Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress move to repeal the Affordable Care Act, data in Maryland shows that many of the counties that voted for Trump saw the largest reductions in the ranks of the uninsured under the law. The biggest drop since enrollment began in 2013 — 11 percent — came in the rural Eastern Shore county of Somerset, according to data provided by the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange, which operates the online marketplace where people can enroll in private insurance and Medicaid. (Cohn, 2/4)

Nationally, open enrollment for 2017 coverage ended with more than 9.2 million plan selections in the 39 states that use the HealthCare.gov enrollment platform, from November through Jan. 31, federal health officials announced Friday. That figure is down from 9.6 million during the same period a year ago. Proponents of the ACA pointed out that official outreach for exchange enrollment was sharply cut back after the inauguration of President Trump two weeks ago. Trump and his fellow Republicans who control Congress are opponents of the ACA, often known as Obamacare, and they are working to repeal it. (Miller, 2/3)