Covered California Insurance Signups Outpacing Last Year's Enrollment Numbers

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Individual insurance sign-ups under California's health care exchange were running ahead of pace from a year ago, when the marketplace opened for the first time, state officials reported Thursday.

According to Covered California, 11,357 consumers selected an insurance plan in the first four days of the second round of open enrollment that began Tuesday. Last year, when technical glitches and paperwork confusion marred the opening of the exchanges nationwide, it took 15 days to reach 11,000 plan selections.

Overall, nearly 70,000 people have been determined eligible for either private health plans sold through the exchange or Medi-Cal, the state's low-cost or free Medicaid health plan for the poor.

"It's something we are incredibly heartened by," Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said Thursday. "When we look at how this compares to open enrollment a year ago, it actually took about two weeks to hit this kind of number. And we saw that in four days."

Despite the strong start, the exchange is still struggling to help consumers. In October, three of every 10 calls to its service center were abandoned. The exchange set a goal of less than 3 percent.

Only 27 percent of calls were answered within 30 seconds that same month, compared to a goal of 80 percent.

Among the top reasons people call for help: They need help resetting passwords, have re-enrollment and open enrollment questions, want to check their status for Medi-Cal or want to report a change.

Even though the exchange is boosting staff, Lee encouraged people to seek help during low-call volume times. The service center is open until 8 p.m. weeknights and open Saturday and Sunday through Dec. 15. Covered California has also added more than 200 storefront locations to help people enroll.

"Monday mornings are always bonkers crazy. They will be for us too," Lee said. "But we're adding capacity to help people."

This season, the agency is trying to enroll 1.7 million people for private health coverage next year, which would include re-enrolling 1.1 million people who signed up the first season.

State officials are also trying to sign up more people in a shorter amount of time. Open enrollment runs three months through Feb. 15, compared to six months the first time.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.