275,000 Select Plans in Week 8

Nearly 275,000 consumers selected health care plans through the Healthcare.gov online marketplace during the eighth week of open enrollment, according to the “weekly snapshot report” issued by the Department of Health and Human Services. The enrollment period ends Jan. 31, 2016.

The volume for the week of Dec. 20 to 26, 2015 was down sharply from the more than 4 million who selected insurance plans during the seventh week of open enrollment, when consumers were rushing to beat the Dec. 15 deadlines for plans to be effective Jan. 1. The total for the eight weeks was 8.5 million, HHS reported.

About 27% of those selecting plans on the federal marketplace during the latest week were new insureds, compared to 29% of all visitors over the prior weeks.

The Healthcare.gov site had 1.3 million visitors in Week 8, down from the 5.7 million visitors the prior week. The Spanish-language CuidadoDeSalud.gov site had more than 155,000 visitors, compared to 330,000 the week before.

Just over 405,000 consumers submitted applications during the week, only about a tenth of the 4,063,836 who applied in the previous week to beat the Dec. 15 deadline.

More than 366,000 visitors used the “window shopping” feature on Healthcare.gov, along with about 6,700 on CuidadoDeSalud.gov. The comparable figures for the hectic prior week were 2.3 million visitors for Healthcare.gov and 21,000 for CuidadoDeSalud.gov.

For English-speaking consumers, phone calls to the HHS call center totaled about 491,000, down from over 3 million the prior week. The average hold time was just 45 seconds, compared to well over 31 minutes in Week Seven.

Calls to Spanish-speaking representatives dropped by 90% to just over 31,000 from the prior week’s 330,00. Average wait times fell by a similar amount, to six seconds from 59 seconds a week earlier.

Since Open Enrollment began on November 1, HHS noted, more than 8.5 million consumers have signed up for health coverage through HealthCare.gov or allowed their coverage to renew automatically.

“As 2015 comes to an end, I am encouraged to see Marketplace consumers showing how engaged they are with their health coverage,” said Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell. “Millions of consumers that had 2015 coverage – an impressive 60% — came back to HealthCare.gov to update their information, explore the options available for 2016 and select the plan that best fits their needs.”

Individual plan selections for the states using the HealthCare.gov platform include: