Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative, a nonprofit insurer selling on the new health care marketplace, has enrolled 8,000 people for coverage.
CEO Bob DeVita said an estimated 70 percent of those who have enrolled for coverage have done so on the new Obamacare health insurance marketplace.
In early December, DeVita said the number of Common Ground’s enrollees was at 2,200. The month of December saw an “incredible surge,” he said.
DeVita said three factors contributed to the December “surge”: the functionality of HealthCare.gov, the federal government extending enrollment and premium payment deadlines, and Americans’ “natural tendency to wait” and that people were “encouraged to wait because HealthCare.gov wasn’t functioning,” he said.
“You roll up all these waves and you get a perfect storm,” DeVita said.
Common Ground will be “facing several more waves” over the next few months, said DeVita.
“The next wave is making sure we’ve got this enrollment surge under control,” he said. “Then we have to address Gov. Walker’s BadgerCare and HIRSP (Health Insurance Risk-Sharing Plan) decision.”
Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative is one of four insurers selling coverage on the new Affordable Care Act marketplaces in Milwaukee, and was established through a $56.4 million federal loan from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The new insurer’s goal at its inception was to sign up 10,000 members in its first year, and the new numbers show it is 80 percent of the way there with three months still to go in the open enrollment period.
