HHS dramatically scales back open health care exchange enrollment projection

U.S. Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell./ AP Photo

The Obama administration is dramatically reducing expectations for the health care exchange open enrollment period that begins Saturday.

HHS now expects 9 million to 9.9 million individuals to obtain coverage through the state and federal exchanges for 2015.

That range was contained in a memo released by the agency Monday. That's far short of the 13 million enrollments projected by the Congressional Budget Office for 2015.

HHS also slightly reduced the number of individuals who received coverage through the state and federal exchanges for this year. The agency now estimates that 7.1 million individuals have obtained coverage through the government-run marketplaces, down from the previous estimate of 7.3 million beneficiaries. In addition, HHS projected 83% — or 5.9 million of those customers — would retain coverage for 2015.

HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, speaking at the Center for American Progress on Monday, stressed that this will actually be the first full open-enrollment period because it's the first time that re-enrollments will be part of the process.

“Any time you do things for the first time it's hard and you worry,” Ms. Burwell said. “We are going to have things that will go wrong.”

Paul Demko writes for Modern Healthcare, a sister publication of Business Insurance.