About 12.7 million people enrolled in ObamaCare plans this year, which is almost 9 million fewer than had once been expected and 1.4 million fewer than the upper boundary of its revised enrollment forecast.
Nevertheless, Health and Human Services secretary Sylvia Burwell declared the year “a success” and claimed that enrollment “exceeded our expectations.” In reality, ObamaCare enrollment has hit a wall.
At 12.7 million, total enrollment at the federal and state-run ObamaCare exchanges has ended up in the middle of range of the administration’s sharply lowered enrollment forecast, which they said could be anywhere from 11 million to 14.1 million for 2016. The Congressional Budget Office had previously expected enrollment to hit 21 million this year.
With the results now in from the Affordable Care Act’s third open enrollment period, it’s getting increasingly difficult to sugarcoat the extremely low numbers of enrollees relative to original projections. The 12.7 million people who signed up for an exchange plan amounts to just half as many enrollees as was projected by government and private sector research organizations when the ACA passed.
The Rand Corporation predicted 27 million, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Servicespredicted 24.8 million, the Urban Institute predicted 23.1 million, and the Congressional Budget Office predicted 21 million.
Since the Affordable Care Act became law, Democrats have lost majority control of the House and Senate, while opposition to the law has been constant and implacable. Despite its unpopularity, Congressmen Sander Levin and Henry Waxman, former chairs of the two House committees that had primary jurisdiction over health care reform when the law was passed, see the ACA as an important step to moving the U.S. closer to attaining universal health care. They believe Sen. Bernie Sanders’s proposal to throw away the ACA to pursue a single-payer system is counterproductive and dangerous. Levin and Waxman support Hillary Clinton as the presidential candidate who will keep the ACA moving forward.