74,000 Selected Plans in Week 10

More than 74,200 consumers selected Affordable Care Act health care plans through the Healthcare.gov online marketplace during the tenth week of open enrollment, according to the “weekly snapshot report” issued by the Department of Health and Human Services. The enrollment period ends Jan. 31.

The volume for the week of Jan. 3 to Jan. 9 was down from the nearly 83,000 who selected insurance plans during the ninth week of open enrollment. The total for the 10 weeks was 8.68 million, HHS reported.

HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell said her agency continues to “make steady progress signing up new customers as open enrollment proceeds.” HHS is “focused on educating customers about the affordable options at HealthCare.gov and providing them the help they need to make the best coverage choices,” she added.

The Healthcare.gov site had 1.97 million visitors in Week 10, up slightly from the 1.9 million visitors the prior week. The Spanish-language CuidadoDeSalud.gov site had more than 148,000 visitors, compared to 98,000 the week before.

Just over 253,500 consumers submitted applications during the week, up from the 197,000 who applied in the previous week.

More than 503,000 visitors used the “window shopping” feature on Healthcare.gov, along with about 10,000 on CuidadoDeSalud.gov. The comparable figures for the prior week were about 366,000 visitors for Healthcare.gov and 98,000 for CuidadoDeSalud.gov.

For English-speaking consumers, phone calls to the HHS call center totaled about 830,500, up from about 677,000 the prior week. The average hold time was one minute and 21 seconds, compared to two minutes and three seconds in Week Nine.

Calls to Spanish-speaking representatives totaled about 63,800 up from the prior week’s 44,600. Average wait times were about nine seconds, the same as a week earlier.

Since Open Enrollment began on November 1, HHS noted, more than 8.68 million consumers have signed up for health coverage through HealthCare.gov or allowed their coverage to renew automatically. Including dependents, applications have been submitted for just over 11 million Americans.

Individual plan selections for states using the HealthCare.gov platform include:

HealthCare.gov Local Area Snapshot

The Week 10 snapshot included, for the first time this Open Enrollment, a look at plan section by Designated Market Areas (DMAs) which are local media markets. Because some communities do not fall into a DMA, cumulative plan selections for local markets will not total the national cumulative plan selection number.

Local Markets: Cumulative plan selections for local markets are based on Designated Market Areas (DMAs) which are media markets. Some DMAs include one or more counties in a state that is not using the HealthCare.gov platform in 2016. Plan selections for those DMAs only include data for the portions of these areas that are using the HealthCare.gov platform, so the cumulative totals in the snapshot do not represent plan selections for the entire DMA.