Obamacare enrollment hits record high after Biden makes changes

What a difference a new president makes.

Enrollment in Obamacare health insurance plans has hit a record high this season, a clear, if rare, policy victory for President Joe Biden in his first full year in office.

The big surge came amid boosted financial assistance for enrollments, a wider window for sign-ups, the continuing health effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has claimed the lives of more than 850,000 Americans, and the touting of the health-care reform law by the president.

The good news for Biden comes after the president has seen plummeting approval ratings, the stalling of his $1.75 trillion Build Back Better bill in Congress, and a loss at the Supreme Court for his Covid vaccine mandate for large employers.

Open enrollment ended Saturday on Healthcare.gov — the federal government insurance plan marketplace that serves 33 states — and on most of the other states’ Affordable Care Act government-run exchanges.

The official final enrollment number has yet to be tallied. But on Thursday, federal health officials noted that even before the deadline, a whopping 14.2 million people nationally had signed up for coverage in the private insurance plans sold on the government-run Obamacare exchanges.

That tally represents an enrollment increase of well more than 20% from the same period last year.

It blew away the previous record for enrollment, more than 12.6 million, which occurred in 2016, the last full year President Barack Obama was in office. Obama won passage of the Affordable Care Act by Congress early in his first term and embraced the nickname Obamacare, which its detractors long have used with derision.

“People across America can buy high quality health insurance for historically low prices, thanks to the American Rescue Plan and the Affordable Care Act,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said Thursday in a statement touting the high enrollment levels.

“The Biden-Harris Administration will continue to build on the success of these important laws to ensure health care is accessible to everyone who needs it,” Becerra said.

Charles Gaba, who operates the Obamacare enrollment news site ACASignups.net, said the enrollment tally is “definitely a win for Biden.”

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s a very big deal,” Gaba said. “You have millions more people who have coverage, and a good 10 million or so that have it much more affordable for them.”

Gaba also said that a number of health insurance carriers have returned to offering individual plans on Obamacare exchanges after some of them pulled back their offerings during the administration of President Donald Trump.

Experts chalk up the dramatic upswing in enrollment to several key factors, all but one of which directly stem from Biden defeating Trump more than a year ago.

“The federal government’s posture toward the ACA shifted seismically with the 2020 election,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading health-care…