4,500 Tennesseans Enrolled For Coverage: Better, But Far Behind Goal

There were nearly 18 thousand complete applications for coverage from Tennessee in October, and just over that many again in November. The number who chose a plan on the Marketplace leapt up from barely a thousand to 4,507. (Image via getcoveredtenn.org)

Tennessee’s efforts to sign people up for insurance on healthcare.gov improved somewhat last month.  Still, the state, like most others, remains far behind federal goals set before the botched roll-out.

Back in October, only a thousand Tennesseans managed to get signed up for a private plan.  From that low benchmark, November was a big improvement, raising the total to 45 hundred.  And thousands more were told they qualify for Medicaid.

Sharon Barker works as part of GetCoveredNashville, helping about 20 people a week sign up.  Barker says many come in dreading the enrollment process, and wind up relieved.

“It’s like they exhale, because they’re holding their breath all this time, you know: ‘What’s going to happen?’ and ‘This is so confusing’ and ‘I keep hearing all these horror stories.’  And when they finally talk to someone it’s like this breath of ‘Ah, ohhh, that’s all?!’”

Most states are still far behind the goals federal officials set before enrollment started.  By now they had hoped to have five times as many Tennesseans signed up.