Approximately 11.4 million consumers either selected or were automatically re-enrolled in Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance exchange plans during the open enrollment period in 2019, according to CMS’s open enrollment report.

This number has stayed relatively steady since 2018, when CMS reported that 11.8 million members selected or automatically re-enrolled in these health plans.

CMS evaluated the 39 states that use the HealthCare.gov eligibility and enrollment platform, as well as the 12 state-based exchanges (SBEs) that use their own eligibility and enrollment platforms.

The report shows that the total number of consumers selecting health plans declined minimally since 2018, with about 300,000 fewer members selecting plans in 2019 than last year.

CMS noted that this decline was likely due to an increase in the number of individuals with access to employer-sponsored health plans, which would result in a lower demand for exchange coverage.

Additionally, the agency said the decline could be attributed to the roughly 100,000 people who were enrolled in the exchange in Virginia at the end of 2018, and who reported incomes that would make them eligible for the Virginia Medicaid expansion in 2019.

Of the 11.4 total enrollees, 8.4 million purchased coverage through the HealthCare.gov platform, a 1.5 percent decrease from 2018.  Three million consumers used state-based exchanges.

HEALTH INSURANCE RATES remained relatively stable in 2018, new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest, despite concerns over the sustainability of coverage gains made under the Affordable Care Act and significant variation among states.

Between January and September 2018, 29.7 million – or 9.2 percent – of people of all ages were uninsured, a figure the CDC says is “not significantly different” from 2017. An additional 18.9 million people were uninsured in 2010, the year the ACA was signed into law.

The new estimates, based on interviews with more than 61,000 people in the first nine months of 2018, indicate that 69 percent of adults ages 18 to 64 were privately insured, while about 1 in 5 were publicly insured and 13 percent were uninsured. Adults 25 to 34 were most likely to forgo health coverage, while those 45 to 64 had the lowest uninsurance rate.

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