In recognition that many people would be encountering a tax bill for not having signed up for Obamacare last year for the first time this April, the federal government and most states decided to extend enrollments beyond the original deadline. Most of the people facing this new tax bill, the government reasonably assumed, were unaware of the mandate to get insurance and that they would probably be able to get subsidies to purchase it. So far, more than
68,000 have taken them up on the offer, with ten days still to go in the special enrollment period.
While officials had not said how many people they expected to sign up during the special enrollment period, the current tally is a small fraction of the administration’s previous estimates that as many as 6 million people could pay the penalty.
The enrollment period runs from March 15 to April 30. About 36,000 people had signed up during the first two weeks of the enrollment period.
“We hope uninsured tax filers take the next few days to learn about the options and financial assistance that is available and to enroll in a plan that meets their needs — rather than taking the risk of choosing to get by without insurance for another year,” HealthCare.gov CEO Kevin Counihan wrote in a statement.
This is pretty far below Charles Gaba's
estimate of how many this special enrollment period could net—he guesses it could be somewhere from 600,000 to 1.2 million. But that was not a bad guess, since there are some 6 million people finding out they're subject to the fine. It could be that the $95 fine isn't enough to motivate them this time around, or that they're still only vaguely aware of what the fine is all about and that they could be getting health insurance. After all, it's been very difficult to reach a big chunk of the uninsured population with the message. A survey done by Kaiser Family Foundation in January found that
46 percent of the uninsured had no idea that they could get subsidies for getting insured through Obamacare.
There's still 10 days for the government and the states to get the word out. Maybe we'll see a last minute surge of enrollments by the end of the month. Or maybe it won't happen until next year, when the fine is increased substantially (provided the system doesn't come tumbling down in a Supreme Court decision to gut subsidies on the federal exchange).