Obamacare Signups Soar, But Trump Actions Could Still Depress Enrollment

Source: Talking Points Memo



By ALICE OLLSTEIN Published NOVEMBER 22, 2017 10:47 AM

We have reached the halfway point of this year’s open enrollment period—Obamacare’s first under the Trump presidency—and the pace of signups continues to be strong, well ahead of last year. Still, Trump’s actions, including gutting outreach funding by 90 percent and cutting off subsidies to insurance companies, are likely to put a damper on overall enrollment.

The Department of Health and Human Services released an enrollment “snapshot” Wednesday morning showing that nearly 2.3 million people have enrolled so far this year during the first three weeks of open enrollment. That’s several thousand more people than had enrolled in the first four weeks last year, when the Obama administration was pulling out all the stops to encourage signups. Crucially, the number of new consumers signing up for health insurance is also ahead of last year.



However, because the Trump administration cut the length of the open enrollment period in half—from three months down to just 6 weeks—the strong pace of signups this year is nowhere near where it needs to be to match, much less beat, previous years.

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