Obamacare Enrollment Rates Skyrocketing

Republicans have made many attempts to end Obamacare, recently proposing a tax reform bill to end the individual mandate. The mandate gives Americans an incentive to buy healthcare insurance or to pay a penalty. But Obamacare proves to be thriving despite the Trump Administration’s efforts. Recently, the Obamacare mandate has proven it works, with the rate of enrollment much higher than last year.

Despite Trumps Attempts To Dismantle Obamacare, Health Insurance Enrollment Rates Are Set To Be More Than 1 Million Over 2016

Within the first three weeks of open enrollment, almost 2.3 million people signed up, beating last year’s numbers by 64 percent. About 570,000 of those are new customers, and the remaining 1.7 million are returning customers. These numbers are just from 39 states, not including enrollment in other states such as Washington D.C., New York, and California that run their own enrollment.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated 11 million people will enroll this year, exceeding last year’s 10 million.

“Average daily new consumer enrollment is 45% higher and returning consumer enrollment is 41% higher than last year,” group co-founder Joshua Peck wrote in a Medium.com article for the tally.

It is possible that Americans think that due to Trump’s plan to rid of Obamacare completely, that they are signing up to get it while they can before it is gone.

In efforts to furthermore attack Obamacare, on Thanksgiving, Trump claimed that “Obamacare premiums are going up, up, up, just as I have been predicting for two years. Obamacare is owned by the Democrats, and it’s a disaster.” But the only reason that premiums have increased, is because of Trump’s efforts to destabilize the market by taking away cost-sharing subsidies.

It is too soon to know whether the total number will beat last years, considering open enrollment was cut down to only six weeks by Trump, half the length from last year.  More people may be shopping earlier than normal because it is a shortened time. And although it seems that numbers have slowed down a little compared to prior weeks, the enrollment numbers are better than anyone expected.

About The Author:
Cassandra Love

With over a decade of helpful content experience Cassandra has dedicated her career to making sure people have access to relevant, easy to understand, and valuable information. After realizing a huge knowledge gap Cassandra spent years researching and working with health insurance companies to create accessible guides and articles to walk anyone through every aspect of the insurance process.

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