Given the disastrous 2014 rollout, problems with the federal health exchange website and enrollment extended through last April, it was hard to expect that Year 2 could be worse. That said, the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the program, reports that the number of Americans who had either purchased or been automatically reenrolled in a health plan under the federal HealthCare.gov marketplace, or one of the 14 state-run exchanges, had risen to 9.5 million as of mid-January – up from 6.8 million for all of 2014.
That’s about a third of the 28 million individuals who are eligible to enroll for coverage through an exchange (per the Kaiser Family Foundation). In addition, the number of states that have opted for the federally funded Medicaid expansion is now up to 28, plus the District of Columbia.
There’s news from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as well: the ACA is now predicted to cost about 20% less than was initially forecast (due mainly to lower-than-expected premiums), and the CBO expects that 24 million fewer Americans will be uninsured between the start of the ACA and the end of 2016.