There were 4,015,709 Americans who submitted an application and selected a health care plan through Healthcare.gov in the first six weeks of open enrollment, according to the latest figures released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Since open enrollment began on Nov. 1, the agency has been updating and releasing the number of signups every two weeks. Dec. 15 marks the deadline to sign up for health care coverage that begins on Jan. 1. The agency has yet to release the final enrollment numbers.
"Momentum is building," said Sylvia Burwell, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. "As we approach the Dec. 15 deadline for consumers to get coverage that begins Jan. 1, we're seeing hundreds of thousands of consumers each day signing up for coverage they want and need."
From Nov. 1 through Dec. 10, there were 4,015,709 Americans who signed up for coverage. From Nov. 1 through Dec. 12 of last year, there were 4,171,714 Americans who signed up for coverage, signaling that enrollments are on track to decline. There are two fewer days in this year's open enrollment than last year.
Joe Antos, a health care policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said there is always human nature at work with people having a tendency to put things off and that there may be a rush towards the end of open enrollment.
The number of new customers purchasing Obamacare plans is also down from last year during this time. There were 1,501,817 new customers choosing plans last year compared to 1,103,507 new customers choosing plans this year, a decline of 398,310 individuals.
Antos says that a reason for the decline in new customers is likely due to Obamacare's premium increases.
"A reason why it would be lower enrollment this year is not so much that there are fewer people who are available to sign up, or fewer people eligible for subsidies. I think it's really more a matter that the premiums went up—went up a lot," Antos said.
Antos said that the people most affected by the premium increases were those individuals above the poverty level by 200 and 250 percent who do not receive any subsidies to buffer the cost.
"A reasonable hypothesis—if the people who are not getting much of a subsidy who are looking at gigantic increases in premiums and saying I can't afford this," he said.
There were more customers this year who renewed their health care coverage either by selecting the same plan they had, choosing a new one, or automatically reenrolling in a health care plan. Last year, 2,669,896 customers renewed their coverage and this year that number grew to 2,912,202.
The Obama administration said in October that it would handpick plans for those who lost coverage because their insurer exited the exchanges.
"Around the second week of November, consumers whose insurers are leaving the market will get a notice that HealthCare.gov has matched them to another plan," the Associated Press reported at the time.
There were 138,891 fewer unique visitors interacting with the HealthCare.gov website during this year's open enrollment period than last year's. The number of people who window-shopped—or got price estimates before starting an application or logging into HealthCare.gov—also declined.
There were 4,718,633 window shoppers last year compared to 2,309,887 who window-shopped this year, a decline of 51 percent.