Enrollment in Affordable Care Act exchange coverage for 2020 remains largely stable compared with the current year, preliminary federal data released Friday show.
The CMS said 8.3 million people signed up or were automatically enrolled in a health plan during the HealthCare.gov open enrollment through Dec. 17. That's a dip of 1.8% from roughly 8.5 million sign-ups in open enrollment last year.
CMS Administrator Seema Verma cheered the stability of the exchanges while simultaneously reiterating the Trump administration's claims that the exchanges are failing.
"We are reporting that for the third year in a row enrollment in the federal exchange remained stable. Far from undermining the Affordable Care Act, as some hysterical and inaccurate claims would have it, the Trump administration is making the very best of what remains a failed experiment," she said in a statement.
Total sign-ups in states using HealthCare.gov could be higher than reported. The tally does not include the final three hours of open enrollment, which was extended for an extra 36 hours after HealthCare.gov experienced some glitches on Dec. 15. It also does not include plan selections from people who left their contact information at the call center due to high volume.