Patients pour on to successful state insurance exchanges

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Patients pour on to successful state insurance exchanges
Maggie Fox NBC News


People are flocking to the more successful state health insurance exchanges in the final days before a late-December deadline, exchange directors said Wednesday.

So many people are calling in for help that states have had to beef up call center staffing, and insurers have agreed to let deadlines slide a bit so that as many people as possible can get coverage starting Jan 1.

In just five states – California, Connecticut, Kentucky, New York and Washington – more than 436,000 people are signed up for health insurance – more than in the 36 states covered by the federal exchange. But the directors of the five exchanges say what’s happening in their states reflects much of what is going on nationwide – people want health insurance being offered by the Affordable Care Act.

“We are seeing huge interest,” said Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California. “In the first week of December we had 50,000 pick a plan in Covered California. That’s an average of 7,000 a day.” Last week, Lee says, 15,000 people a day were signing up for insurance in California. New York is enrolling 4,500 people a day, Lisa Sbrana, counsel to the New York exchange, said.

This tends to support what federal health officials had predicted – that people would wait until the last minute to sign up for health insurance. On the federal exchange, they’ve been forced to – the HealthCare.gov website was not working well at all until the beginning of December. But even on the state sites that got off to a good start, people have waited until this month to really pile on.

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http://www.nbcnews.com/health/patients-pour-successful-state-insurance-exchanges-2D11770338#null