White House press secretary Jay Carney implied the administration may technically extend the March 31 deadline for those who have "begun the process" of enrolling in Obamacare Friday in the White House press conference.
Carney, in response to a question from Jim Acosta, directed the CNN reporter to the series of extensions in December as a reference for how any additional delays past March 31st might play out.
Overall Obamacare enrollment is a point of concern for the White House, as it remains unclear how many people who have signed up for insurance have actually made their premium payments and are thus insured.
Some estimates indicate as many as one fifth of Obamacare signups have not made the accompanying premium payments.
The White House is projected to have around 6 million sign ups by March 31, one million short of its original goal.
Full exchange:
JIM ACOSTA: If you sign up on April 1st, you won’t be able to, it will just be — you wait till November —
JAY CARNEY: Well, March 31st was the deadline, as was the case for the December deadline, and we’re going to want to make sure that people who are already in line can finish their enrollment. But for how that process works I would point you to what happened in December and how that played out.
ACOSTA: So for this period you could kind of —
CARNEY: I would refer you to CMS and HHS for how to explain the — how that works. Again, if you — we want to make sure as we did in December on that deadline that folks who have begun the process are able to complete it. We certainly expect, naysayers notwithstanding, there’s going to be continued interest right up to the deadline and that interest will probably increase as we approach the deadline.