Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Monday that between 80 and 90 percent of Obamacare enrollees had paid their first premium, according to estimates from insurance companies, the last step to initiating their coverage.
Sebelius made the comments, flagged by BuzzFeed, in an interview with KWTV in Oklahoma City.
Insurance companies “tell us that, for their initial customers, it’s somewhere between 80, 85, some say as high as 90 percent, have paid so far,” Sebelius said. “Lots of companies have different timetables for when their new customers have to send their first payment.”
Sebelius gave the figure in response to a question about whether the 6 million enrollments touted by the Obama administration could later drop if some people don’t pay their premiums. The administration has not released any formal figures; Sebelius noted that customers pay their premiums directly to insurers.
Previous outside estimates had placed the payment rate in the same range that Sebelius gave.
