Illinois Obamacare Signups Down 26% Amid Nationwide Drop

[Swordsmyth]

Despite lower prices for health insurance this year, a staggering 26% of Illinois residents have chosen not to enroll in plans through the Obamacare exchange so far this year, according to numbers released last week by the Trump administration.

The Chicago Tribune reports that three weeks into open enrollment, Illinois residents had only purchased 57,819 heal insurance plans on the exchange, vs. the 77,960 chosen this time last year, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services.
It isn't just Illinois either - as just 1.9 million people in the US have selected plans in the first three weeks vs. 2.3 million last year - a drop of 21%.

It wasn’t immediately clear Wednesday why enrollments were down, though a number of factors have changed since last year.
For one, unlike in previous years, people who choose not to buy health insurance for next year won’t have to pay penalties for being uninsured. Also, Illinois got 78 percent less federal money to hire workers, known as navigators, to help people enroll in health insurance plans this year. -Chicago Tribune
​

"People could be choosing to sit out this year," according to Stephani Becker - associate director of health care justice at the Chicago-based Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, adding, "We won't really know the effect until the final numbers," which will come in after December 15 when open enrollment ends.
Meanwhile, Illinois' uninsured rate has risen slightly from 6.5% to 6.8% the previous year, according to the US Census Bureau.
The Tribune suggests that perhaps consumers are simply looking to take advantage of new insurance options, such as extended short-term plans.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-25/illinois-obamacare-signups-down-26-amid-nationwide-drop

 

[phill4paul]

Illinois has added about 50+k jobs since Nov. 2017. (Obamacare: 77k - 57k = 20k.) With these jobs probably came insurance. Nationally over a 500k jobs were created. (Obamacare: 2.3m - 1.9m = 400k.) These too probably came with insurance of some type. Voila. Mystery solved.
Thank you President Trump!

 

[Zippyjuan]

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/art...rd-number-of-chicagoans-with-health-insurance

City reports record number of Chicagoans with health insurance

Chicago has reported its lowest-ever number of residents without health insurance, with nearly 91 percent of city residents insured in 2016, according to figures released this week from the U.S. Census' American Community Survey.

Just 9.6 percent, or about 256,000 people, remain uninsured in the city. American Indian and Alaskan natives were the highest population without insurance in Chicago in 2016, with nearly 26 percent remaining uninsured.

Andrea Kovach, a Chicago-based senior attorney at the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, credits the rise in health care to the Affordable Care Act, expanded Medicaid program and the Children's Health Insurance Program. She pointed to year-over-year decreases in the number of uninsured people with incomes at least 138 percent below the poverty line, which qualify them for Medicaid expansion or subsidized health care. At least 86 percent of Chicagoans in this income bracket were insured in 2016.

More at link. More have become insured since then.

Statewide- only seven percent of the population reports no insurance vs 9% for the US as a whole. https://www.kff.org/other/state-ind...0&sortModel={"colId":"Location","sort":"asc"}