HHS saw a rush of people enrolling in insurance plans through HealthCare.gov as consumers sought to meet the Jan. 15 deadline to get coverage effective Feb. 1.
Between Jan. 10-16, more than 400,000 people enrolled in an insurance plan on the federal marketplace. That compares with roughly 100,000 a week over the past few weeks. Still, it was less than half of the more than 1 million people who signed up in the week before Dec. 15, the deadline to get policies that were effective Jan. 1.
Nearly 700,000 people submitted applications last week to HealthCare.gov, HHS said. States with the highest enrollment through the federal marketplace as of Jan. 16 were Florida with 1.2 million enrollees, Georgia with 425,927 and Pennsylvania with 422,000.
Including the nearly 990,000 people who have signed up on state-based exchanges through last week, more than 8.2 million people have either enrolled or re-enrolled into coverage since the start of the open enrollment period that started Nov. 15 and ends Feb.15. HHS has estimated that 9.1 Americans would enroll in 2015 coverage, although the Congressional Budget Office projected exchange enrollment would reach 13 million this year.
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