More than 47,000 Illinois residents have signed up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchange since February, as part of a special COVID-19 enrollment window that ends Sunday.
Normally, Illinois residents have only from Nov. 1 through mid-December to select health insurance plans on the exchange at healthcare.gov, unless they have a major life event, such as a marriage, having a child or losing their health insurance coverage. But this year, President Joe Biden’s administration opened a special enrollment window, for anyone, aimed at helping people get health insurance during the COVID-19 pandemic.
During that window, from Feb. 15 to the end of July, Illinois residents selected 47,939 new health insurance plans — nearly twice the number as during the same time period last year, when people could only sign up following a major life event.
The special enrollment window ends Sunday, meaning that people who don’t sign up for coverage by then will no longer be able to buy exchange coverage for this year unless they have a qualifying event. They will have to wait until Nov. 1 to shop for a new plan for next year.
Most people in Illinois get health insurance through employers or government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. But each year, hundreds of thousands of Illinois residents, who typically don’t get insurance through employers, buy health insurance through the exchange, created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
Nationwide, more than 2.5 million people have signed up for new coverage as part of the special enrollment period.
Those numbers are likely a result of people wanting insurance in case they get COVID-19, outreach and more generous tax credits that help offset the costs of exchange plans, said Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in an interview.
The American Rescue Act Plan of 2021 expanded tax credits to more people, including those with higher incomes, and increased the amounts of the credits. As a result, many people who had already bought plans for this year on the exchange returned in recent months to see if they could get better deals.
“We’ve seen during this period of time what a difference outreach and making coverage affordable, (has on) the lives of people,” Brooks-LaSure said. “We have had a lesson as a country, as a world really, about how critical it is to have health insurance coverage in a pandemic.”
Since the Rescue Act Plan went into effect, 2.6 million people across the country have gone back to the exchange to search for better deals and reduced their monthly premiums, after tax credits, by 39%. In Illinois, consumers who already had exchange coverage but went back to the exchange starting April 1, saw their average monthly premiums decrease from $217 to $148.
“Amid the resurgence of COVID-19 and the delta variant, the feeling is that to have high-quality health insurance is more important than ever,” said Stephani Becker, associate director for health care justice at the Shriver Center on Poverty Law in Chicago. “It is also more affordable than it’s been before so, of course, that is a motivator.”
When enrollment opens again on Nov. 1 for people to buy plans for 2022, Chicago area residents may see similar prices for insurance plans on the exchange as they did for this year, before taking into account tax credits.
Cigna HealthCare of Illinois is proposing an average rate increase of about 1.6%, Celtic Insurance Company is proposing a decrease of about 3.3% and Bright Health Insurance Company of Illinois is proposing an increase of about 1.3%.
Information about prices from the state’s largest health insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, was not available Wednesday, but spokeswoman Lilyanna Fragoso confirmed that it will again offer plans on the exchange for next year.
Rates are expected to be finalized in coming months.
The Biden administration has also proposed lengthening the open enrollment window for 2022 by 30 days, so that it would last from Nov. 1 through mid-January instead of mid-December. And it has proposed special enrollment windows, in the future, for lower-income consumers.
