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In a surprisingly pessimistic forecast, the Obama administration predicted on Thursday that health insurance enrollment on the Affordable Care Act’s public marketplaces will only inch up from current coverage levels by the end of 2016. After an elaborate analysis of demographic data, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of health and human services, said that 10 million people were expected to have marketplace coverage at the end of next year, up only about 100,000 from recent levels and millions short of earlier projections. She called that “a strong and realistic goal.” (Pear, 10/15)

This third open-enrollment season had widely been expected to make the greatest gains after the first go-round was marred by technology problems, and the second unfolded as a major challenge to the law loomed in the Supreme Court. The new season also carries a big incentive for consumers to buy insurance: to avoid the heftiest financial penalty yet on their taxes for going without coverage. (Radnofsky and Armour, 10/15)

Department of Health and Human Services officials Thursday predicted that about an additional 1 million Americans would sign up for coverage under the federal health law next year and acknowledged that prospective enrollees are worried about the cost of health insurance, even with the law’s financial help. (Carey, 10/15)

That is only a small increase over 2015, when 9.1 million Americans are expected to have coverage through the marketplaces, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The 2016 target is also significantly lower than what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had predicted. Earlier this year, the budget office estimated 21 million people would get coverage through the marketplaces next year. (Levey, 10/15)

The anemic projection comes as the sprawling law is entering a new phase. Having survived the disastrous 2013 rollout of HealthCare.gov, the federal exchange’s online enrollment system, and weathered two Supreme Court challenges, the ACA has moved past critics’ early hopes that the law might quickly collapse. Proponents note that the statute has been responsible for the biggest gain in insurance coverage in decades. But questions linger over whether it can reach deep into the pockets of the nation’s most intractable uninsured populations and whether people who currently have health plans through the marketplaces will decide that the coverage is worth keeping. (Goldstein, 10/15)

More than 25% of those who are uninsured and eligible to buy plans on the federal and state health insurance exchanges are expected to select plans during the open enrollment that starts Nov. 1, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell said Thursday. The other 75% are "a little harder to reach," said Burwell. Those who don't have health insurance in 2016 will face a penalty of $695 per person on their taxes for the year. (O'Donnell, 10/15)

As Obamacare’s third enrollment season unfolds against the backdrop of the 2016 presidential election, the administration announced a surprisingly low enrollment goal on Thursday — a target of 10 million people covered through the health law’s exchanges by the end of 2016, or a net increase of roughly 1 million. (Pradhan, 10/15)

Burwell called the new goal “strong and realistic.” An aide said the congressional numbers are based in part on assumptions that haven’t panned out, about employers dropping job-based plans for their workers, and about people with their own private coverage switching to HealthCare.gov. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 10/15)

About 17.6 million people have gained insurance coverage through the exchanges and through the expansion of Medicaid plans for the poor since early 2014. The exchange-based plans are sold by private insurers including Aetna Inc, Anthem Inc and UnitedHealth Group Inc. More than 85 percent of individuals with these plans receive a government subsidy based on their income, aimed at making them more affordable. (Humer and Lambert, 10/15)

The affordability of health insurance has been brought up by both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates ahead of the 2016 election, and the administration’s success or failure in signing up people for coverage next year could heighten that debate. Enrollment for 2016 coverage on the exchanges starts on Nov. 1, about three months before voters in each party begin choosing their candidates in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. (Tracer, 10/15)

Two weeks before a new round of signups begins for health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act, federal officials have dampened projections about how many people will enter the marketplace this year, but say they are making a concentrated push to get uninsured Texans in particular to enroll. (Walters, 10/16)