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 "The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, is working. It's working
better than we anticipated, certainly working a lot better than many
of the critics talked about early on," President Barack Obama said
in a video linked to the White House tweet.
Administration officials have said they expected 9.1 million people
to be enrolled in coverage and up to date on insurance payments by
the end of the year. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had
predicted 12 million enrollees for 2015.
Last April, the Obama administration announced that more than 8
million people had selected plans for 2014. But by the end of last
year, only 6.7 million were still enrolled.
Obamacare's open enrollment period for 2015 began on Nov. 15 and
closed on Sunday.
The White House said there had been a surge of applications in the
last nine days of enrollment, particularly on Sunday.
"Sunday, February 15 was the biggest enrollment day ever: more new
consumers signed up for health coverage than on any day this open
enrollment period or the last," the White House said in a statement.
The U.S. Health and Human Services Department said on Saturday that
a technical problem had prevented some consumers from enrolling but
that the issue, involving income verification, was fixed late on
Saturday.
The department said on Saturday that anyone who had been unable to
submit an application because income could not be verified due to
that problem or any other technical issue would receive an extension
for enrollment.
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Plans for Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act, are
sold on HealthCare.gov for 37 states. The other 13 states plus
Washington, D.C., run their own websites.
The Obama administration said last week that 2015 Obamacare
subsidies were averaging $268 a month for people in the 37 states
who had qualified for federal assistance.
(Reporting by Breaking News Team; Editing by Peter Cooney and Lisa
Shumaker)
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