Older People Lead Sign-Ups for Insurance

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Older People Lead Sign-Ups for Insurance

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and ROBERT PEARJAN. 13, 2014

Attendees at an Affordable Care Act enrollment event in LaGrange, Ky., in October. Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — People signing up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s federal and state marketplaces tend to be older and potentially less healthy, officials said Monday, a demographic mix that could threaten the law’s economic underpinnings and cause premiums to rise in the future if the pattern persists.

Questions about the law’s financial viability are likely to become the next line of attack from its critics, as lawmakers gear up for the midterm elections this fall. Republicans quickly seized on the government’s progress report on Monday as evidence that the health insurance law would not work.

But administration officials expressed optimism that more young people would sign up in the months ahead, calling the latest enrollment numbers “solid, solid news” for the health care law. They said that interest in obtaining insurance through the marketplaces was increasing sharply across all age groups and that youth outreach efforts would become more aggressive as the March 31 open enrollment deadline approached.

“We’re pleased to see such a strong response and heavy demand,” said Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services. “Among young adults, the momentum was particularly strong.”

Of those who signed up in the first three months, administration officials said, 55 percent are age 45 to 64. Only 24 percent of those choosing a health insurance plan are 18 to 34, a group that is usually healthier and needs fewer costly medical services. People 55 to 64 — the range just below the age at which people qualify for Medicare — represented the largest group, at 33 percent.

The latest figures about enrollment add pressure on the Obama administration after a disastrous rollout of the HealthCare.gov website in October. Senior officials said they understood the stakes and were working to increase sign-ups. The White House recently hired Marlon Marshall, the deputy national field director for Mr. Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign, to run a campaign-style effort aimed at increasing sign-ups, especially among young people.

Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the House speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, predicted that the White House would fail to meet its goals and said that insurance premiums would rise.

“There’s no way to spin it: youth enrollment has been a bust so far,” Mr. Buck said. “When they see that Obamacare offers high costs for limited access to doctors — if the enrollment goes through at all — it’s no surprise that young people aren’t rushing to sign up.”

The demographic information, which had not been broadly available until Monday, also offers the first concrete evidence about whether the national health care experiment will work the way it has in Massachusetts, where a government marketplace also offers insurance to people who do not receive it through their employers. Officials said they were optimistic because the pattern of sign-ups among young people looked similar to the one they had seen in that state, which had a surge in sign-ups as the deadline approached.