“Take a few minutes to apply. It’s worth it,” the message said.
In Cleveland, the Cuyahoga Health Access Partnership, a group that helps people enroll, was planning a telethon on Thursday broadcast by the local ABC affiliate. Sarah Hackenbracht, the group’s executive director, said she hopes the Obama administration will extend the Dec. 15 deadline, as it did last year.
“This is still a very new process for a lot of people,” she said in a phone interview. “Most people have a lot of other focuses this month, particularly it being a holiday month, that maybe their health insurance isn’t at the top of their minds.”
Andy Slavitt, the principle deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which manages the Affordable Care Act, said in a Dec. 4 conference call with reporters that “we do not plan on extending deadlines.”
“If there are specific situations that are very, very limited that we need to re-evaluate at the time, of course we’ll do that,” he added.