Dr. Oz announces 15.6M HC.gov enrollees to date, down 600K from last year...but no CMS report

Tue, 12/23/2025 - 5:09pm

Just before shutting down for Christmas, Trump Regime CMS Administrator Dr. Oz announced that...

Quick ACA Update: More than 15.6 million Americans have enrolled in a plan on the federally run exchanges so far — compared to roughly 16 million Americans last year.

Notably, this small drop follows several important CMS actions over the past year to combat fraudulent and improper enrollments, which have already removed more than enough people from premium subsidies who are covered elsewhere to account for the modest enrollment change. That said, there is a politically motivated lawsuit that has paused critical actions to make sure Biden-era improper enrollments are fully knocked out.

IMPORTANT NOTE: For those who need insurance and have not already signed up — go to HealthCare.Gov to see if you qualify and what types of plans you can get. Most Americans can access a plan for $21 a month!

...and...that was it. There were no further details announced by Oz, nor has there been any formal press release or enrollment report published to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) website as of this writing.

I'm not going to even get into his claims about "fraudulent & improper enrollments" or his garbage about the lawsuit which (thankfully) has at least temporarily stopped some of the Trump Regime's nastier policy changes being "politically motivated"

It's 5:08pm the day before Christmas Eve, so unless they have a press release scheduled to automatically publish later on today or tomorrow, I'm assuming that there won't be any further details released by CMS before January.

I therefore don't have a whole lot of data to work with here, but there's still a few important points:

First of all, 15.6 million is for HealthCare.Gov only. It doesn't include the 21 states operating their own ACA exchanges.

Second: The actual total number of federal exchange enrollees at the same point a year ago was actually over 16.6 million...at least that's the number reported as of December 18th, 2024. Dr. Oz didn't provide the actual thru dates for either last year or this year, so I have to assume that the actual drop-off is around 1.0 million or so.

Third: It's important to remember, however, that Illinois transferred from the federal exchange over to their own state-based ACA exchange this year, which means I have to subtract their total from last year's HC.gov tally. This makes the total from last year more like 16.2 million, which means this year's HC.gov enrollment is only down around 600K year over year, or around 3.7%.

I don't know how many more people enrolled across the 21 state-based exchange states (or rather, I have numbers for a handful of them, but even those are potentially misleading since some of them still haven't reached their deadline for January coverage, some have implemented their own supplemental subsidies to backfill the lost federal ones to shore up enrollment, etc), but assuming enrollment across those is also down a similar ~3.7% so far, that would mean enrollment is down another ~270,000 or so, which would be down perhaps ~870,000 nationally vs. the same point a year ago.

As I warned several weeks ago, the "small" drop (as Dr. Oz puts it) will very likely end up being much larger than that once the millions of people who were just passively auto-renewed receive their January premium invoices:

1. Sometime on December 23rd (just before DC shuts down for the holiday break), Trump & CMS will crow about how he "managed Obamacare better than Obama & Biden!" even though it's "still terrible & needs to be replaced with a much better plan" which he'll be announcing "very soon, probably within two weeks!"

2. Congressional Republicans will pounce on the high enrollment to mock Democrats for "needlessly scaremongering" everyone about people losing coverage etc etc, and how this "proves" that the enhanced tax credits "were never needed in the first place!"

3. Both Congressional Republicans & Trump will, of course, use the above as another excuse not to extend the enhanced tax credits.

4. Sometime between Christmas & New Year's Eve, millions of people who let themselves be auto-renewed will receive their January premium invoices...often for double, triple, quadruple or more than what they've been paying this year.

5. After they finish freaking the fuck out, some of them will use the extra time left in the Open Enrollment Period (most states will have until January 15th) to switch to a different plan starting in February. The plan they switch to will likely still cost somewhat more and/or have higher out of pocket costs than they do now. Oh, yeah...and the deductible & out of pocket cap will be reset for 11 months instead of 12, so anything they pay towards that in January won't be counted.

6. Others will be forced to drop coverage altogether. This is when the bulk of the "several million losing coverage" that the CBO projected will likely happen. Some may be able to cover the absurdly higher premiums for 3-4 months before having to drop coverage entirely, which will dilute the impact in the media.

7. Meanwhile, all of this will be playing out against the backdrop of the Continuing Resolution which Democrats agreed to last month expiring and the federal government facing another shutdown scenario at the end of January...once again, tied primarily to the enhanced tax credits being reinstated.

The point is that Trump & Congressional Republicans will get their victory lap & "Much Ado About Nothing" talking points out there before #4 - 7 above happen. Watch for it.