United States govt sees 10 mln people with Obamacare insurance by end '16

Secretary Burwell said, "We know that the remaining uninsured have a lot of concerns about whether they can afford coverage".

Ahead of the next open enrollment period, which officially runs from November. 1 until January 31, 2016, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell revealed 10.5 million Americans are still uninsured but now eligible for the Health Insurance Marketplaces, which include federal health exchanges and the state-level marketplace. Not surprisingly, Medicaid enrollment growth differed sharply between those states that adopted the ACA's Medicaid expansion and those that did not.

"Our service offers a great benefit to the small business owner or self-employed individual looking for health coverage", said John Carroll, principal and founder of Enrollment USA.

"Early projections for marketplace sign-ups envisioned a significant migration from employer-sponsored coverage", Burwell told reporters. By comparison, during the previous three years, total enrollment in individual-market plans was almost flat, fluctuating narrowly around 12 million individuals. They tend to be young, managing very tight household budgets, and often unaware they can qualify for taxpayer-financed assistance with their premiums. Almost 8 in 10 people without insurance have less than $1,000 in savings, and about half have less than $100 in savings.

That's about a million more than signed up this year.

The administration did give a partial explanation for the reduced enrollment expectations, noting that when CBO constructed its estimates, it mistakenly assumed that more employers would strip their workers of health coverage and send them to the marketplaces than actually did.

In addition, federal health officials point out that the dynamics of insurance coverage have not been playing out as analysts expected. The administration said recently it terminated coverage for a few 420,000 people who couldn't document that they were citizens or legal immigrants.

"We will have activities for the kids, we will have a flu shot clinic, and we will have counselors who speak English, Spanish and Portuguese, helping people navigate health insurance enrollment forms and helping them get health insurance", she says.

In Hampton, health care navigator Jamila Allen of Enroll Virginia, said her office would have all the information on available insurance plans the week before enrollment starts. But, for carriers offering coverage on the exchanges, enrollment increased by 5,270,318 individuals, while for carriers not offering exchange coverage, enrollment decreased by 474,550 individuals.[3] That also suggests that a few individuals who previously had individual-market policies purchased replacement plans through the exchanges. About 8 in 10 will also be eligible for financial aid, which covers roughly 70 percent of premiums on average.