More than 425,000 Californians have signed up on the state’s health insurance exchange — with nearly 100,000 rushing to enroll in the last four days before the 2016 open enrollment period ended Jan. 31, officials said Thursday.
The exchange, Covered California, had estimated it would attract between 295,000 and 450,000 new enrollees during its third open enrollment season since the Affordable Care Act took effect. In addition to the new enrollees, about 1.15 million existing consumers re-upped this year, officials said, for a total of about 1.57 million.
Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, said about 37 percent of the new enrollees are young adults aged 18-34, up from 34 percent from last year. That’s good news for exchange officials, because younger, healthier adults help subsidize coverage for older Californians.
“We continue to have a broad and healthy mix of those signing up for coverage … which means better rates and a more stable system, both for all of our enrollees, and for the entire individual health insurance marketplace in California,” Lee said.
Lee declined to provide additional information on the ethnic and demographic breakdown of enrollees or the plans they chose, saying the numbers were still being analyzed.