About 372,000 people selected a health insurance plan during the first week of Affordable Care Act open enrollment for 2019, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The first week was short, with only 3 days to select coverage.
For Nov. 1-3, the exact number of plans selected was 371,676, which is about 38% less than last year’s first week, which was 4 days long, so the average number of plans selected per day was down by a little less than 18%, CMS data show.
“The final number of plan selections associated with enrollment activity during a reporting period may change due to plan modifications or cancellations,” CMS officials said, adding that the weekly data release “only reports new plan selections and active plan renewals and does not report the number of consumers who have paid premiums to effectuate their enrollment.”
Open enrollment will continue for another 6 weeks, with Dec. 15 being the final day to enroll for 2019 coverage on the 39 state exchanges that use the HealthCare.gov platform.