More than 3 million people have enrolled in the state and federal exchanges to date, proving the success of the marketplaces, CMS officials said Wednesday.
In total, 2.84 million consumers have made plan selections by Dec. 5 on Healthcare.gov, with 1 million of those being new consumers, the agency announced during a news conference.
“All the evidence for us is that the marketplace is strong, vibrant and it's growing,” Acting CMS Administrator Andrew Slavitt said.
Still, Slavitt faced questions about the long-term viability of the exchanges, if there are fewer insurers as a result of struggling payers exiting the marketplace.
Last month, UnitedHealth Group announced it may exit the exchanges in 2017 as the company has lost $425 million from health plans sold on the Affordable Care Act's marketplaces. Last week, Cigna CEO David Cordani announced that the company had made no money off the exchanges thus far.
Slavitt, however, remains pleased with the marketplaces performance thus far.
Another 721,000 have re-enrolled or selected a plan in nine of the 13 state-based exchanges, according to publicly posted information or data submitted to Modern Healthcare from officials. Requests for enrollment figures from the District of Columbia and Kentucky were not immediately returned. A spokeswoman from the Iowa exchange said data won't be released until after Dec. 15. A New York spokesperson said it wouldn't release data until after open enrollment closes.
HHS predicts 10 million people will have coverage by the end of 2016. It's expected that people will automatically renew or sign up for 2016 coverage at the last minute.
The deadline for consumers to enroll in a health plan that would cover them effective Jan. 1 is Dec. 15. Open enrollment ends Jan. 31.
