Obama administration delays open-enrollment period for 2015 coverage

The Obama administration is making another change to the federal healthcare reform law. The open-enrollment period for 2015 policies will be delayed by a month.

Instead of opening Oct. 15, the state and federal exchanges will begin enrolling customers for 2015 coverage Nov. 15. The open enrollment period will last until Jan. 15, rather than Dec. 7 as previously scheduled.

The delay will allow insurance companies more time to analyze the customer pool they ultimately end up with for 2014 coverage. Previously, companies would have been required to submit their 2015 rates by the end of April. That would have given them little time to make actuarially sound assessments after the open-enrollment period closes March 31. Now firms will have an additional month to calculate their rates, according to an HHS official.

Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a key architect of Massachusetts' healthcare reform law, said this problem should have been foreseen. “We know from Massachusetts that all the young, healthy guys sign up at the very end,” he said. “This is something that should have been fixed a while ago.”

But the timing is also fraught with politics. The new open-enrollment period will begin after Election Day, meaning consumers won't start shopping for coverage until they've already headed to the polls.

If rates balloon for 2015—as some have predicted given the problems with the rollout of the insurance exchanges—it could prove a major political problem for Democrats.

Republicans argue this was the motivation for the change. “This is clearly a cynical political move by the Obama administration to use extra-regulatory, by any means necessary tools to keep this program afloat and hide key information from voters,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in a statement. “The Obama administration ought to answer for this shift.”

Gruber, however, said premium levels and policy cancellations are still likely to be known well ahead of the beginning of the open enrollment period, but consumers won't be able to shop or apply. “I don't understand that argument,” he said. “It seems to me that's bad for the Democrats.”

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