Open enrollment 2018 dipped to 8.8M signups, slightly lower than last year

Roughly 8.8 million people signed up for insurance on the ACA marketplace during the shortened, six-week open enrollment period in the 39 states that use the federal healthcare.gov website.

That number is just short of last year's enrollment, which saw 9.2 million sign-ups.

CMS adjusted its marketing budget this year, and spent only $10 million on outreach efforts — down from $100 million one year prior. In addition, healthcare.gov was scheduled for a total of 60 hours of maintenance, though it only used 21.5 hours.

"Our goal from the beginning was to empower patients across the healthcare delivery system and make sure that Americans who chose to enroll in the Exchanges had a good customer experience while making enrollment more cost efficient, and the results show that we accomplished our goal," CMS Administrator Seema Verma said. "In a market that is experiencing soaring rates, I am proud of the hard work CMS put into making sure that our customers didn't experience the website failures that were commonplace with HealthCare.gov in previous open enrollment periods."

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