Obamacare sign-ups remain strong at 8.8 mln for 2018 despite obstacles

WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Some 8.8 million people have signed up for Obamacare health insurance plans for 2018, a U.S. official said Thursday.

The figure, which came from a tweet posted by Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), was about a 4.4-percent decline from last year's sign-ups.

The 45-day sign-up period for coverage under Obamacare, or Affordable Care Act, ended last week in 39 states using the federal website, healthcare.gov. Last year, with twice as much time to enroll, some 9.2 million people signed up.

The remaining states that run their own online enrollment have set deadlines as late as Jan. 31, suggesting that the number of Obamacare enrollment revealed by Verma would not be the final figure.

Obamacare supporters said the sign-ups far surpassed their expectations, given that Republicans in Congress had repeatedly tried to repeal the Democratic bill, which was signed into law more than seven years ago by former President Barack Obama.

The Trump administration also cut the enrollment period in half, while reducing the advertising budget by 90 percent, moves that critics labeled as detrimental to Obamacare enrollment efforts.

Verma said CMS's outreach was much more "cost effective" this year and it spent just over 1 U.S. dollar per enrollee on outreach and education, compared to over 10 dollars per enrollee last year. Enditem