Over Half a Million People Defied Trump to Enroll in Affordable Care Act Health Care

Many health coverage advocates are counting this as a win for the ACA after a year dominated by “repeal and replace” doom and gloom and program budget cuts. But Director of State Health Reform at the Kaiser Family Foundation Jennifer Tolbert cautions that it may be too early in the game to know what these numbers mean for sure.

“It’s really hard to know what’s going to happen. What’s really important here is that the open enrollment period has been shortened from the 12 weeks of the prior years down to six weeks, so it will end on December 15. That compresses the timeline and the time period for which people can sign up for coverage,” Tolbert told VICE Impact. “There’s just so much uncertainty that the playbook we’ve become used to with the prior open enrollment periods just isn’t going to apply this year.”

Some worry that this early enrollment boost could be made up of sicker Americans who rely heavily on ACA coverage, or other select groups who specially sought out enrollment information after the Trump administration cut the program's advertising budget by 90 percent, and that numbers may dwindle as the period carries on. But it’s also possible that the GOP push to shut down Obamacare could have actually drawn extra attention to ACA coverage options as open enrollment arrived, even in the face of misinformation about coverage options and affordability.

Additional research has also become available to counteract anti-ACA rhetoric. One Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found that more than half of all uninsured Americans could acquire marketplace coverage for less than the penalty they would owe for lacking insurance, and of those almost 6 million people, more than 40 percent could get covered under a bronze plan for no out of pocket cost at all.

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“Health care has been such a prominent issue for the entire past year, and while that might have created some confusion, particularly with repeal efforts… it also has heightened media coverage and other coverage of the marketplace,” Tolbert said. “I think the strong sign ups in the first week have surprised people. So it is possible that those expectations of lower enrollment may not be born out. But I think it’s much too early to tell.”

It’s also worth noting that these early numbers apply only to enrollment on the federal Healthcare.gov platform, excluding 15 states with state-run marketplaces, such as California, Massachusetts, and New York, where enrollment turnout has been high in past years.

Only ten days remain in the 2018 open enrollment period, which is half the length of previous years, so don’t sleep on it.

If you haven’t started the enrollment process, visit Healthcare.gov or your state’s own online marketplace to make an account. The website will lead you through the application process, and collect your financial information to figure out what assistance may be available to you and your family.

You’ll then have the chance to check out qualifying plans and figure out what coverage fits your needs best based on services and financial commitment. If you’d rather register offline, you can register over the phone by calling the Marketplace Call Center at 1-800-318-2596 or you can find a trained Navigator near you to help with the application process in-person.

The best way to fight federal attempts to sabotage open enrollment is to find out if you qualify for coverage, and enroll if you do . Then, it's all about getting the word out about open enrollment to your friends and family. Get America Covered makes this easy , with shareable social graphics, easy to understand fact sheets, and an email list serve.