Obamacare enrollment seems to be recovering from its slow start and picking up in the last few weeks, according to news reports.
The New York Times reported Monday that more than 50,000 Americans had selected a health plan through HealthCare.gov, the federal website serving 36 states, as of mid-November. That’s up from about 27,000 who had picked a plan over the entire month of October.
According to the Los Angeles Times, enrollment in some of the 15 state marketplaces is also on the upswing. In the first half of November, California has nearly doubled its enrollment in all of October. In the Minnesota, the rate of enrollment in the second half of October was triple what it had been in the first half of the month. State officials in Connecticut, Kentucky and Washington told the Times that they were on pace to beat their enrollment goals and/or top last month’s enrollment.
The official figure released so far by the Obama administration is 106,105 enrollments nationwide as of Nov. 2. It was well below the administration’s goal of 500,000 enrollments by the end of October. But administration officials and outside experts have consistently said that they expect enrollment to pick up in the later months.
The White House’s goal is seven million enrollees by March 31, 2014.
