With less than a month remaining before a March 31 deadline, about 4.2 million Americans have signed up for new health insurance policies offered under President Barack Obama's health care law, including nearly 114,000 in Illinois, according to federal data released Tuesday.
The new enrollment figures show that the pace of new sign-ups in Illinois slowed in February, suggesting that the state will fall far short of its 2014 enrollment goal of 300,000. In order to reach that number, more than twice as many people need to sign up for plans in March than in the previous five months combined.
The figures overstate the number of people who are officially on insurers' rolls because an unknown number of the reported sign-ups have not paid their insurance bills and therefore do not have coverage. Administration officials have not released the number of enrollees who have paid premiums.
Between Feb. 1 and March 1, 25,131 Illinoisans selected policies on new exchanges created under the law, down from 27,491 in January. Nationally, more than 940,000 signed up in February.
Administration officials expect a surge of enrollment this month as the deadline for open enrollment nears.
The figures also show that sign ups in Illinois lag other states of similar or smaller size. In Pennsylvania, which has a population similar to Illinois, nearly 160,000 people have signed up so far. Enrollment also is higher in smaller states, like Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina, the data show.
The marketplaces still remain more popular among older and potentially less healthy consumers, a trend that the Obama administration expected, but also one that threatens to push up monthly premiums unless more young people enroll.
About 56 percent of those who signed up in Illinois were age 45 or older, and women outnumbered men, an important distinction because women traditionally are more expensive to cover, according to the new data. Those percentages have remained steady for the past two months.
During the five-month period, about 25 percent of enrollees in Illinois and across the country were ages 18 to 34, unchanged from figures reported last month.
That age group represents 40 percent of the population eligible to enroll in marketplace plans, according to an estimate from the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, so the state and national figures are still well below that mark for the demographic group.
Often called 'young invincibles,' these consumers, in theory, will help keep health insurance premiums at bay by offsetting the costs of insuring older, sicker people, who tend to ring up more health care spending.
Nationally, about 27 percent of new sign-ups in February were between ages 18 and 34, the same rate as the previous month, but up from 24 percent in the first three months.
pfrost@tribune.com
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Posted by Unknown on Tuesday, March 11, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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