83,000 Selected Plans in Week 9

More than 83,000 consumers selected Affordable Care Act health care plans through the Healthcare.gov online marketplace during the ninth 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 Dec. 27 to Jan. 2 was down sharply from the nearly 275,000 who selected insurance plans during the eighth week of open enrollment. The total for the nine weeks was 8.6 million, HHS reported.

The Healthcare.gov site had 1.9 million visitors in Week 9, up from the 1.3 million visitors the prior week. The Spanish-language CuidadoDeSalud.gov site had more than 98,000 visitors, compared to 155,000 the week before.

Just over 197,000 consumers submitted applications during the week, down from the 405,000 who applied in the previous week.

More than 366,000 visitors used the “window shopping” feature on Healthcare.gov, along with about 98,000 on CuidadoDeSalud.gov. The comparable figures for the prior week were nearly 588,000 visitors for Healthcare.gov and 21,000 for CuidadoDeSalud.gov.

For English-speaking consumers, phone calls to the HHS call center totaled about 677,000, down from about 491,000 the prior week. The average hold time was two minutes and 3 seconds, compared to just 45 seconds in Week Eight.

Calls to Spanish-speaking representatives totaled about 44,600, up from the prior week’s 31,000. Average wait times were about nine seconds, compared to six seconds a week earlier.

Since Open Enrollment began on November 1, HHS noted, more than 8.6 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 more than 10.8 million Americans.

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