California health insurance exchange enrolled 59000 since Oct. 1

Posted: 11/13/2013 02:00:00 PM PST

Updated: 11/13/2013 02:10:30 PM PST

By Tracy Seipel

SACRAMENT) -- Seven weeks after the official launch of the state's online health care exchange, at least 59,000 residents have enrolled in a health insurance plan through the state's website, exchange officials said today.

'The numbers are better than encouraging,'' said Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, in a statement. 'They show momentum and very high consumer interest.''

But the numbers also represent only a fraction of the 1.4 million that the exchange hopes to sign up by the end of 2014. Officials say a demographic breakdown of those numbers is expected to be released on Nov. 21.

The Oct. 1 rollout of the online insurance marketplaces, the most significant part of the 3-year-old federal health care law, included 14 states that established their own websites, while 36 other states are using the federal government's healthcare.gov website, which has been plagued by software problems.

Those issues, among others, likely contributed to the disappointing numbers posted Wednesday by the White House, revealing that fewer than 27,000 people signed up for a health plan through October.

States running their own enrollment systems did better, signing up more than 79,000, for a total of more than 106,000.

But that was barely one-fifth of the nearly 500,000 people that the administration had projected would sign up in the first month, and represents just 1.5 percent of the 7 million people the administration hopes to enroll by next year in the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

In California, officials said that 203,904 people have started online applications, while 97,494 have completed their applications, though they have not yet selected an insurance plan, at which point they would be enrolled.

The exchange reported that the 203,904 people who started applications represent 370,000 individuals; of those individuals, 72,007 were determined to be eligible for Medi-Cal, the state's healthcare program for the poor.

About 5.8 million Californians do not have insurance or do not have health care provided by their employers.

Contact Tracy Seipel at 408-275-0140. Follow her at Twitter.com/taseipel.