Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Enrollment Period Comes To An End With Little Fanfare From Administration
The third open-enrollment season for health plans under the Affordable Care Act moved into its final hours Sunday night with little fanfare from Obama administration officials who had been urging consumers to buy insurance. It was unclear whether the close of the three-month enrollment window drew any stampede of last-minute shoppers on HealthCare.gov, as was the case during the first two sign-up years. In each of those, federal health officials trumpeted a late surge of people choosing health plans as evidence of Americans' eagerness for coverage. (Goldstein, 1/31)
The Obama administration has increased its outreach this year to Hispanics, running special ads and targeting cities like Houston, Miami and Dallas with big Hispanic populations. Across the country, 20.9 percent of Hispanics are uninsured in the U.S., compared to 12.7 percent of blacks and 9.1 percent of whites, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. There are lots of reasons why. Hispanics are more likely to work in jobs that don't offer health benefits. Many are ineligible for the Affordable Care Act, or just don't know about the options available. (Feibel, 1/30)
Covered California, the state鈥檚 insurance exchange, announced Friday that it was extending its enrollment deadline until Feb. 6 for people who had officially begun the process of signing up by Sunday. Exchange officials said they extended the Sunday deadline to accommodate a surge in enrollment in the previous week involving 鈥渢ens of thousands鈥 of consumers. As of Jan. 27, the exchange reported that more than 329,000 new consumers had signed up for coverage during the third annual enrollment period, which is within the estimate of the exchange鈥檚 estimate of 295,000 to 450,000 new enrollees. (Terhune and Feder Ostrov, 2/1)
The Maryland Health Benefit Exchange has extended its deadline for residents to enroll for health insurance because of the record-breaking snowstorm. Carolyn Quattrocki, executive director of the exchange, said in a news release Friday that the deadline for enrolling in a health benefits plan was extended from Sunday to11:59 p.m. Feb. 5. (1/29)
Open enrollment for 2016 ends Sunday for those who buy health plans from the private market or health insurance exchanges. But if you don鈥檛 act by the deadline, are you completely out of luck? Not necessarily. (Bazar, 2/1)
