The figure includes people who have paid for their premiums and are enrolled as of Aug. 15. 7.3M enrolled in Obamacare plans

The administration’s announcement that 7.3 million people are now enrolled in health insurance plans on the Obamacare exchanges immediately ignited a new round of arguments about the success or failure of the health law.

The figure — which is the number who had signed up and paid as of mid-August — is a drop from the 8 million who had chosen plans but not necessarily paid by mid-April. But it’s much higher than the 6 million that the Congressional Budget Office forecast would be covered this year, a number that seemed unattainable when the botched launch of HealthCare.gov slowed signup to a crawl last October.


Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner released the first enrollment update since May as she appeared at the House Oversight Committee on Thursday. She pointed to good enrollment news as the administration gears up for the second signup season in November, and as the GOP renews its attack on the Obama administration for security flaws at HealthCare.gov.

But Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) called the updated figure a “precipitous drop.” Tavenner countered that it’s a “really strong number.”

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Paul Houchens, an actuary at Milliman who closely tracks the health law, later said in an email that the new number is “about what I would expect based on the initial sign ups and reported payment ratios.”

The figure is complex to unravel. The number came from the health insurers, who told the Obama administration every month how many people are covered by Affordable Care Act plans. A CMS official said Thursday that in prior monthly reports, the numbers varied widely, but recently stabilized.

It includes some of the 8 million who signed up in the regular season, minus those who didn’t pay or dropped out for some reason, such as deciding that they didn’t like the coverage or getting a new job with insurance. It also includes those who signed up in the “special enrollment” period because of changes in their job or family situation that affected their insurance coverage.

Tavenner refused to break down the figures and other CMS officials said they couldn’t do so, either.

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“We are encouraged by the number of consumers who paid their premiums and continue to enroll in the marketplace coverage every day through special enrollment periods,” she said.

Republican critics of the health law have been skeptical of the 8 million figure, in part because the administration wouldn’t say for several months how many people had paid.

“For the past five months, the administration has been silent on enrollment details for the president’s health care law, and now we know why: the number was going down,” said Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas). “Sadly, this comes as no surprise.”

The figure’s release also starts to answer a long-term question facing Obamacare: will people stay on the rolls? It will be a particularly important question in the second year, when the Obama administration tries to enroll millions more Americans in the president’s signature health law.

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The insurance industry had estimated that roughly 15 percent — estimates ranged from 10 percent to 20 percent — of the enrollees wouldn’t pay up. The main industry lobby had no comment on Tavenner’s announcement. But, in general, the insurance industry is increasing, not shrinking, its footprint in the exchanges in the second year.

Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said the figure suggests that “fears about large numbers of enrollees failing to pay their premiums were unfounded.”

“The real challenge is now figuring how to ramp up enrollment significantly going into the next open enrollment period,” he said. “Reaching the Congressional Budget Office’s projection of 13 million enrolled next year will be at least as hard as getting this first 7.3 million signed up.”

It was the first official enrollment update since shortly after the open enrollment season ended in April. At that time, 8,019,763 had chosen health insurance plans, but not all had paid premiums.

About 115,000 customers still have immigration or citizenship data-matching discrepancies, and information to fix those problems has not been sent to the Department of Health and Human Services, an agency official said. Those people could lose coverage this month and cause the number of enrolled people to change further.

The figure’s release came as Republicans resharpened their attacks on HealthCare.gov’s security in a House Oversight Committee hearing.

Issa accused Obama administration officials of covering up weaknesses in HealthCare.gov and blocking full transparency in the Obamacare website. He went after the administration officials for working with Democrats on the committee “to make this hearing good for you.”

He accused them of “covering up the ongoing failure to secure a website that cost … over a billion dollars.”

Tavenner defended the website and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, telling Congress that the agency is “keenly aware of the challenges we face as a new program of this scale matures, particularly one that faced significant challenges in its first year.”

She said there’s no evidence to date that any American’s personal information has been “maliciously” accessed on HealthCare.gov. Issa said that “malicious” intent is irrelevant if information can be accessed even “accidentally.”

Tavenner said the administration is working on “significant technological improvements” to the federal enrollment website and its systems and that consumers can have confidence that their information is secure.