But also Thursday, the Washington state insurance marketplace announced record enrollment in its Obamacare plans, with 13 percent more customers than last year's open enrollment season.

The ex-chief marketing officer of the federal Obamacare exchange estimated Thursday that "sabotage " by the Trump administration led to almost 500,000 fewer people signing up for health insurance plans this year than would have if Barack Obama was still president.

But Washington's exchange, along with the 11 other marketplaces run by individual states and the District of Columbia, are likely to account for just 25 percent or so of the national tally for Obamacare enrollment.

The rest will come from the federal exchange, HealthCare.gov, which serves residents of 39 states.

Joshua Peck, former marketing chief of HealthCare.gov, in an article posted on Medium said that he expects that exchange's contribution to the national tally to be lower than it could have been because of a decision by the White House to cut back outreach efforts in the last week of enrollment for that marketplace.

"There should be no doubt that [President Donald] Trump's efforts to sabotage enrollment in the final days before the [enrollment] deadline were at least somewhat successful," wrote Peck.

"About 480,000 real people, with lives and families didn't get health coverage," Peck wrote. "Some of them are going to get very sick in the coming year and they won't have health insurance. Some will choose not to get the care they need and others will be forced into medical bankruptcy."

Peck noted that before Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20 and subsequently cut ads and outreach for HealthCare,gov, enrollment levels were "tracking ahead of last year."

As of mid-January, about 8.8 million people had signed up on HealthCare.gov, and another 2.8 million had signed up on the state-run exchanges.



Peck estimated that the reduced outreach led to 350,000 fewer people than might have signed up. The remaining lost estimate enrollment, he said, was due to signals by the Trump administration that it might not enforce the Obamacare tax penalty for people who fail to have some sort of health coverage.