Forget the 7.1 million: ObamaCare's real enrollment numbers are still to come

The Affordable Care Act was never going to solve the nation's health care problems in its first big year

Obama and Biden
(Image credit: (CC BY: The White House/Pete Souza))

President Obama confirmed on Tuesday that a last-minute surge has enrollment on the Affordable Care Act's new insurance exchanges topping 7.1 million, just under the deadline to register (or to start the registration process, depending on the state). The president claimed victory in a speech at the White House, having achieved a goal that was in doubt when Healthcare.gov stumbled badly out of the gate in the fall of 2013.

But if we buy the Congressional Budget Office's projections, hype over hitting the magic "seven million" might be short-sighted — there's a bigger enrollment story on the horizon. The agency expects enrollment though the insurance exchanges to more than triple by the end of 2016, to 22 million. Total enrollment is expected to level out at 24 million to 25 million in 2017.

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Adrianna McIntyre is a graduate student in health policy at the University of Michigan. She serves as managing editor of The Incidental Economist