Nearly 140K State Residents Have Signed Up For Insurance On Exchange

Nearly 140,000 people in Wisconsin have signed up for health coverage on the federally run exchange, with half of them enrolling in the past seven weeks.

The final enrollment numbers for Wisconsin’s federally run exchange show 55 percent of those signing up were women, and that nearly one-third of consumers were between the ages of 55 and 64.

“Overall, the enrollment was strong,” said Bobby Peterson, who directs ABC for Health, a public interest law firm that helps people find coverage. “It was strong in Wisconsin despite a headwind of opposition to the Affordable Care Act. So the fact we reached almost 140,000 people was great.”

Robert Kraig, who directs Citizen Action of Wisconsin, says demonstrated interest in the marketplace will diminish attempts to repeal the law.

“There’s very little appetite even among members of the public who’ve had doubts about Obamacare, for actually repealing it,” said Kraig. “So I think repealing will be an electoral issue, but it’s not practical.”

At 26 percent, Wisconsin still lags other states in the number of young – presumably healthy – people who signed up for coverage on the exchange. This concerns Kraig, who says it could result in higher premiums.

Michael Hash, with the federal Office of Health Reform, says it won’t.

“We believe, based on the data we’ve seen, that premiums will be stable and that the risk pool is sufficiently large and varied to support that kind of pricing in every state,” said Hash.

Most enrollees on the exchange in Wisconsin were white. In addition, 6 percent were African-American, and 3.2 percent indicated they were Latino. According to the U.S. Census that’s half the state’s Latino population.