There's just about a week left in the open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act. The Trump administration set the deadline for states using Healthcare.gov for Dec. 15, but California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C. all extended the deadline later into December or into January. A number of states have extended their deadlines by a few weeks for this year only, in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Enrollments this year have been really robust, despite two-time popular vote sore loser Donald Trump's sabotage. The fourth week of open enrollment, the most recent enrollment period records are available for, saw 523,020 people selecting plans. That brings the total enrollment as of Nov. 28 to 2,903,574 enrollees, substantially up from last year's first four weeks of enrollment—like 523,047 more people than last year. The third week of enrollments had 758,421 sign ups. As of Nov. 28, there were 659,455 new customers, with the rest renewing.
As always, whether as a new or renewing customer, shopping around and shopping carefully is particularly important this year. That's because brokers have been set loose by Trump sabotage to sell junk health plans, competing with fully ACA-compliant plans. Weeding out those plans will save consumers potentially thousands of dollars if they end up getting sick and needing coverage. Because Trump plans just don't do the job.
But shopping around is important this year, too, because there are once again some very good deals to be had just in time for the millions of people who've lost their jobs and their coverage. Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that at least 11 million people will be able to get "virtually free" insurance, and another nearly 5 million can get insurance "for significantly reduced price" in the ACA. They estimate 4.5 million currently uninsured people could get a bronze plan, the lowest level of coverage, for free after subsidies. That’s $0. They could also, however, get a very affordable better quality silver plan with small premium payments after subsidies.
"Like all ACA-compliant health plans, Bronze plans come with other valuable benefits," KFF explains. "All plans must cover the full cost of a wide range of preventive care services for their enrollees, without applying a deductible or copayment. These services include many forms of health screenings and immunizations, as well as contraception. Additionally, some bronze plans voluntarily cover some primary care services before the deductible." But every year under Trump it's been the same problem—the administration doesn't advertise and do outreach, so a big chunk of the uninsured population isn't aware that they can get health coverage for free. So while enrollment numbers thus far are strong, if the word got out, they could be even better.
Enter the Biden administration. Obamacare enrollment can be reopened because of the pandemic and the new administration can do the work Trump has refused to do to get people enrolled. Millions more people enrolled could also help out as the Supreme Court deliberates on its decision of whether to keep or strike down the law. As of now, the court doesn't seem likely to toss the whole law out, but having millions more people relying on it wouldn't hurt as they make their decision.