Health-Insurance Deadlines Keep Slipping - Last-minute influx of enrollees prompt the Obama administration and some states to keep the rolls open for Jan. 1 coverage.

From The Wall Street Journal:

A last-minute rush of customers helped new health-insurance exchanges boost enrollment this week, and many states extended deadlines to accommodate stragglers.

 

But officials acknowledged they had a long way to go to make a big dent in the number of uninsured people and attract the younger, healthier customers needed to make the economics of the new marketplaces work.

 

Americans hustled to sign up for government health-insurance plans this week to have their coverage kick in by Jan. 1.

 

The shifting deadlines illustrated the concern about giving people a chance to enroll after technology problems made the federal HealthCare.gov site and some state sites virtually unusable in the weeks after they opened Oct. 1. The federal site serves 36 states, while 14 states are running their own exchanges.

 

Initially the administration set a Dec. 15 deadline for those who wanted coverage taking effect Jan. 1. It later moved the deadline to Monday, and when that date arrived, gave an additional day as a "fail-safe" for those who faced snafus.

 

As darkness fell on Christmas Eve, the federal HealthCare.gov site posted a further modification, saying people who "might have run into delays" and missed the deadline should contact a call center. "We still may be able to help you get covered as soon as January 1," it said.

 

A Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman, Joanne Peters, said the call centers "are doing casework on an individual basis."

 

Many of the states running their own exchanges have announced similar delays. California set a new deadline of Friday at 8 p.m. local time for people who didn't finish filling out their applications, telling them to contact a call center. Massachusetts, Minnesota and Rhode Island said residents could sign up as late as New Year's Eve for coverage starting the next day.

 

The changes put more pressure on health insurers to get paperwork in order so people who have signed up for coverage can actually use it.

 

State figures suggest many people procrastinated in buying coverage. Colorado had more enrollees Monday than in the entire month of October, said Patty Fontneau, head of the state's health-insurance exchange. "We had underestimated the number who would wait until the last minute," she said.

 

Other states reported a similar rush. Nearly a third of the 65,472 people who signed up for private health plans in Washington state through Monday did so in the final four days. Connecticut recorded 6,700 enrollees on Monday, double the previous single-day high. HealthCare.gov received two million visits on Monday, federal officials said.

 

The totals showed a wide divergence, with technology troubles leaving states such as Maryland, Minnesota and Oregon far behind similarly sized states. Those states have replaced their health-exchange directors and Maryland brought in a new contractor that also is working to repair the federal website.

 

President Barack Obama said on Dec. 20 that more than a million people nationwide had signed up for private coverage through the health-insurance exchanges, and the state numbers suggested the end-of-year total might approach two million.

 

Still, that would fall well short of the more than three million enrollees in private coverage the Obama administration foresaw in one early projection.

 

The mix of enrollees is also a potential problem for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, because insurers need younger customers to balance the costs of those who are older and tend to be sicker. In one typical example, Rhode Island reported that 40% of its new enrollees were between 55 and 64 years old, while only 8% were between 18 and 25.

 

"This is the start of a longer process," said Ms. Fontneau, the Colorado exchange director. "We are planning a significant push in the coming months to reach out to people who are younger and healthier."

 

Colorado has more than 700,000 uninsured people, according to an estimate by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health-care think tank, and so far 42,771 people in the state have signed up for private coverage.

 

The federal and state websites are designed to offer coverage for those who don't have health insurance through their employer or a government program such as Medicare. Starting in 2014, most Americans who fail to carry health insurance will have to pay a tax penalty, which starts at $95 or 1% of taxable income in 2014 and rises in subsequent years. Enrollment for 2014 plans will continue through March 31.