{"id":9993,"date":"2017-01-31T09:55:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-31T09:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2017\/01\/31\/last-chance-to-sign-up-for-obamacare-for-2017-and-maybe-forever\/"},"modified":"2017-01-31T09:55:00","modified_gmt":"2017-01-31T09:55:00","slug":"last-chance-to-sign-up-for-obamacare-for-2017-and-maybe-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/last-chance-to-sign-up-for-obamacare-for-2017-and-maybe-forever\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Chance To Sign Up For Obamacare, For 2017 And Maybe Forever"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Kodjak<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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HealthCare.gov’s open enrollment for 2017 started Nov. 1 and ends on Tuesday. Andrew Harnik\/AP<\/strong> hide caption<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Andrew Harnik\/AP<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It’s the last day to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And at Whitman-Walker Health,<\/a> a community health center near downtown Washington D.C., people have been streaming in looking for help choosing an insurance plan.<\/p>\n

Katie Nicol is a senior manager who oversees the five so-called navigators whose sole job is to help people sign up for insurance coverage.<\/p>\n

“We’ve been busy, you know, consumer after consumer all day,” she said in an interview Monday. She expects to be busier Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Which may be surprising, given all the uncertainty surrounding the Affordable Care Act.<\/p>\n

Not far from Whitman-Walker, Republicans in Congress and President Donald Trump are working to dismantle the health care law.<\/p>\n

Members of the House and Senate earlier this month took the first steps<\/a> to repeal the ACA. Trump followed suit, issuing an executive order<\/a> that asked his agency heads to do all they could to ease what he called the law’s “burdens” on companies, insurers and individuals.<\/p>\n

So this could be the last enrollment day ever for Obamacare, which first provided coverage in 2014.<\/p>\n

Even so, as the midnight deadline to sign up for coverage approaches, Nicol says demand for insurance hasn’t waned.<\/p>\n

“Our volume has been the same as it has been in past years,” she said.<\/p>\n

That tracks with the latest numbers released by the Department of Health and Human Services. As of January 14, 8.8 million<\/a> people had signed up for coverage \u2014 slightly more than last year.<\/p>\n

Those numbers haven’t been updated since Trump moved in to the White House on January 20, so it’s unclear whether enrollments have picked up or slowed.<\/p>\n

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