The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services second-week enrollment report for the Affordable Care Act is out, showing stabilized enrollments compared to last year. The first week of enrollment was marred both by a short reporting period—just a few days long—and by a technology breakdown that could have resulted in as many as 100,000 people being unable to enroll.
In the second week, 754,967 people signed up, down by about 6% total from last year. That's 558,962 people who renewed coverage during week 2 (a 10% decrease from last year) and 196,005 new enrollees who did not have Marketplace coverage last year. That's a 6% increase in new enrollees compared to week 2 last year.
All in all, enrollments seem to have stabilized, and as Get America Covered's Joshua Peck says, "The fact that the number of people signing up for coverage during Week 2 this year is relatively similar to Week 2 last year suggests that early Open Enrollment signups at HealthCare.gov are stable." In other words, so far, so good. Will it keep up? "It's likely that enrollment during Week 2 was slightly higher than normal as people who could not enroll last Friday returned to HealthCare.gov to try again," Peck says. "The first few weeks of enrollment are renewal-heavy and new enrollees are more likely to signup during the final week."
If that's you or someone you know, there are plenty of resources to help in doing the homework to get signed up, and there's just a month left to do it in. Knowing what resources are already out there will help you figure it all out and help others. Get Covered America's open enrollment toolkit provides all the information you need to get enrolled or help others. And, as always, Healthcare.gov is the place to get it done.