On Thursday, the Health and Human Services Department said that 943,934 new enrollees signed up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act between the end of open enrollment on Feb. 22 and June 30. The new customers were able to sign up during "special enrollment periods" tied to life changes like marriage, the birth of a child, or the loss of employment. Thursday's numbers are preliminary — they only include customers in the 37 states that use the federal HealthCare.gov marketplace, but they also don't count people who enrolled then didn't pay their premiums.
Thanks in part to the new enrollees, the U.S. insurance rate has dropped below 10 percent, to 9.2 percent, according to federal National Health Insurance Survey data released earlier this week. Seven million fewer people lacked insurance in the first three months of 2015.
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