A late push, an extended deadline, and Obamacare has 6,000,000 signups for 2016, the President announced on Friday.
This includes 2.4 million new Obamacare customers. Last year at this time, the program had 3.4 million signups, reports The Hill.
To achieve the impressive-sounding number, the feds had previously extended the deadline for filing from Tuesday, Dec. 15 to Thursday, Dec. 17. (This was the deadline of coverage that begins Jan. 1, 2016; citizens can still enroll by Jan. 31 for coverage that begins March 1.)
"Years of steady implementation of the Affordable Care Act helped to drive the rate of the uninsured in America below 10 percent for the first time since records were kept on that," Obama announced at a White House press conference.
This sweetened for the Administration a week that hasn't been the greatest for the program officially known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA). On Friday Congress passed an omnibus bill including a delay on the so-called Cadillac Tax on big-ticket ACA plans that is supposed to help fund the program.