20 percent of Obamacare enrollees failed to pay their premium

The New York Times reports that, according to insurance companies and industry experts, one in five people who signed up for health insurance under Obamacare failed to pay their premium on time and therefore did not receive coverage in January. Given Obamacare’s disastrous rollout, the White House had urged insurers to give people more time to pay, and did so. But some people missed even the extended deadlines.

Presumably, human nature is an important cause of the failure to pay on time. In addition, some people must have changed their minds about whether they wanted coverage, and in some cases the insurer may have failed to send the invoice on time.

It also appears that some people signed up for multiple plans. Once they selected the plan they really wanted to purchase, they never took the trouble to return to HealthCare.gov (who would want to) and remove themselves from plans they had previously selected.

Accordingly, it may well be that the government is double and triple counting when it reports that 3.3 million have enrolled under Obamacare.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses