(Bloomberg) — The window to buy insurance via the Affordable Care Act closed on Feb. 15 — except where it didn't. Many consumers stymied by website glitches at the deadline will get an
A group of Democratic senators is
Giving people another two months to enroll for coverage would raise the risk for insurance companies that some people will wait to buy insurance until they need it. That's called adverse selection, and it's why health plans have limited open enrollment windows to begin with. If you could buy coverage all year round, some people would wait until they get sick to sign up, and there might not be enough healthy people paying into the risk pool to cover the costs.
"It takes somewhere from three to seven healthy people to make up for one unhealthy person when it comes to cost," says Jim O'Connor, principal and consulting actuary at Milliman. There's no telling what mix of sick and healthy people would sign up if the deadline were extended. While extra time raises the risk of adverse selection, O'Connor says, the tax penalty "might shake up some of the healthy people" who would have otherwise not enrolled. "It does have some potential for increasing costs," he says, though it would likely be a "manageable change."
Clare Krusing, a spokeswoman for the industry group America's Health Insurance Plans, said she couldn't comment before seeing a specific proposal from the Obama administration. Supporters of the extension argue that it won't be a big deal. Timothy Jost, a health law professor at Washington and Lee University, argues in a