TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – With open enrollment complete as of Dec. 17, a weekly report showed that Florida had the highest number of people enrolling in the federal health insurance marketplace in the country.
A record 1.9 million Floridians found insurance through the federal health insurance marketplace between Dec. 8 and Dec. 17. That’s an additional 125,000 from 2018.
The number dwarfs the state with the second-highest number of new enrollments – Texas with 1.1 million – as well as North Carolina, with less than half of its residents enrolling.
Among the 39 states in the federal marketplace, enrollment was down nationally from 8.5 million in 2018 to 8.3 million this year.
The weekly data comes as the Affordable Care Act weaves its way through the federal court system to ultimately determine how constitutional or unconstitutional the law is.
A federal judge in Texas ruled last month that the Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional – including the penalty for those who do not enroll – but postponed any action until an appeal could be made. In a lawsuit filed Jan. 3, more than 20 states asked for a lower appeals court to expedite a ruling in the appeal of the December Affordable Care Act ruling.
More than 20 million people across the country would lose their health insurance if the original ruling was upheld, according to the Urban Institute. Nearly 4 million of them would be Floridians.
Should the ruling be upheld, federal health care spending would drop by more than 40 percent, based on the Sunshine State’s high participation rate.
