Today is the 11th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act becoming law and the COVID pandemic has demonstrated how important the ACA’s promise of having reliable health coverage can be. Acknowledging the importance that the opportunity to get covered through the ACA marketplace has been during the pandemic, HHS announced today that the COVID Special Enrollment Period (SEP) will be extended from May 15 to August 15, 2021. The COVID SEP is ongoing as it began on February 15, and now consumers will now have an additional three months in which to enroll in coverage without needing to provide proof of a qualifying life event.
This announcement applies to any consumer who lives in the federally facilitated marketplaces which utilize healthcare.gov. State-Based Marketplaces (SBMs) have their own deadlines which have been outlined in our previous blog post which we update regularly as states change their own deadlines.
To read more about the announcement, check out the following links: