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The Obama administration said Thursday that 11.3 million people had signed up for health insurance so far during the Affordable Care Act’s third open enrollment period, with indications of a strong desire for coverage among young adults and others who were not enrolled last year. “We’re seeing unprecedented demand for marketplace coverage,” said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of health and human services, who released the data just hours after the Republican-controlled Congress cleared legislation to repeal the health care law. (Pear, 1/7)

The total includes 8.6 million people (76 percent) through last Saturday in the 38 states using the federal marketplace, HealthCare.gov, as well as 2.7 million people (24 percent) who enrolled in coverage as of Dec. 26 in the 13 state insurance exchanges. Enrollment is well ahead of the figures announced in late 2014, when more than 7.1 million people had signed up for 2015 health plans – 6.5 million via HealthCare.gov and 633,000 in the 14 states that were then running their own marketplaces. (Sun, 1/7)

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that total included about 4 million people under age 35. U.S. health insurers, including UnitedHealth Group Inc, have said that they are losing money on the exchanges because many of their patients are older or have high medical costs. (Humer, 1/7)

Some insurers have expressed concerns with the mix of healthy and sick people signing up. United Healthcare made waves in November when it announced that it might leave the ObamaCare marketplaces in 2017 because it is losing money. Other insurers followed that announcement by making clear their commitment to the ObamaCare marketplaces. (Sullivan, 1/7)

The Obama administration so far is making little progress in getting more young adults to sign up for health policies on the federal insurance exchange, according to figures released Thursday. Twenty-six percent of people who signed up for coverage as of Dec. 26 in the 38 states that use the federal exchange were ages 18 to 34, according to a report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers the law. (Armour, 1/7)

Three-quarters of the enrollees are from the 38 states that use the HealthCare.gov enrollment platform, and the rest are in states using their own marketplaces, accord to HHS. (Muchmore, 1/7)

Among the 8.2 million reenrolling customers nationwide, as of Dec. 26, about half came back, reviewed their information and actively selected a marketplace plan, instead of being automatically reenrolled. About 60 percent of people who actively reenrolled in federal exchange states, or 2.2 million people, switched to a different plan than they had for 2015 coverage. (Galewitz, 1/7)

Seeking a strong showing in President Barack Obama's last year in office, the administration said Thursday 11.3 million people have enrolled for health law coverage with three weeks still left in the sign-up season. But a major independent survey out simultaneously showed that progress reducing the number of uninsured Americans stalled last year. (1/7)

Investors and politicians are closely watching the sign-up numbers to analyze how Obamacare is faring. Hospitals and insurers are counting on enrollees to boost their profits, after signs that some people had dropped their policies weighed on hospital stocks last fall. (Tracer, 1/7)