Dive Brief:
- The White House has announced that consumers now have until December 23 to enroll in a private health plan with coverage starting Jan. 1, 2014, eight days later than the original Dec. 15 deadline.
- Administration officials also plan to push back the second round of open enrollment from Oct. 15, 2014 to Nov. 15, 2014; that gives health plans until the end of May to set 2015 rates, plus an extra month to study exchange performance, FierceHealthPayer notes.
- To date, just over 106,000 people have selected plans through the federal and state insurance marketplaces; the administration says it expect seven million people to sign up by the end of the open enrollment period on March 31.
Dive Insight:
Sure, state exchanges may be enrolling people briskly. But given the depth of HealthCare.gov's troubles, it's difficult to envision it contributing millions of registrations to the pile by March 31 of next year. Sure, the eyes of the nation will be on HealthCare.gov to see if it can actually begin to do its job in a timely manner, and that may motivate the White House to crack the whip harder. Under the circumstances, though, I'm not optimistic about its being ready for full volume anytime in the next few months; there's just too many things t hat have gone wrong already.