About 4,000 Marylanders enroll in health coverage

As of Wednesday at 3 p.m., about 4,000 Marylanders had completed an enrollment application for insurance through the state’s health exchange since Saturday.

That’s in stark contrast to the small handful of people who enrolled in the first few days of open enrollment last year.

The 4,000 people includes consumers who enrolled via the website, Marylandhealthconnection.gov, as well as people who enrolled in-person with help from exchange staff, or over the phone with help from the customer call center.

Another 6,681 applications had been started as of Wednesday afternoon, meaning those consumers are in the process of enrolling, said spokesman Andy Ratner.

Some Marylanders have expressed confusion over what appear to be conflicting “go live” dates for the website. That’s because the message has not been consistent — and officials sort of did that on purpose.

Here’s the breakdown: Officials have been saying for weeks that the website would allow the public to enroll on Wednesday, Nov. 19.

But actually, Ratner said, people could have started purchasing coverage via the website as early as Monday — officials didn’t tell anyone that, though. They decided to launch the website to the public early because it had been performing well in tests and for specially trained support staff who were allowed on the system over the weekend.

Ratner said “a few people” may have gotten on the site on Monday, but only if they happened to notice enrollment was live.

Then, on Tuesday morning at 10 a.m., exchange officials announced on social media channels that they decided to launch the website to the public a day earlier than expected.

But, Ratner continued, in some places — including the exchange homepage itself — the go-live date was still listed as Thursday, Nov. 19.

Ratner said that was done intentionally in order to continue the “soft launch” and not overburden the system with an inundation of consumers all at once.

“The bottom line is, can you ramp up successfully?” Ratner said. “So even if people were a little confused by [the inconsistent timeline], the key is that they were ultimately able to get online and enroll successfully.”

Ratner said the next key date that consumers should know is Dec. 18. That’s the last day to get health coverage that will take effect on Jan. 1.

However, consumers have until the end of open enrollment on Feb. 15 to enroll in coverage for next year (it will just take effect later in January or February).