According to Maryland’s Money Matters, a publication by the Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute, over 85,000 Marylanders have obtained coverage under the Affordable Care Act.  From the publication:

Indeed, the Maryland Health Connection reports that the site has been increasingly able to handle the high demand for coverage, demonstrated by the more than 300,000 unique visitors to the exchange website and 33,000 calls to its call centers since opening on October 1. Of these visitors, more than 40,000 people have created identity-verified accounts for their households, and more than 27,000 have learned whether or not they are eligible for subsidies. Further, as of October 23, more than 3,100 Maryland households have successfully enrolled in an insurance plan through the Maryland Health Connection.

Additional enrollees are due to an expansion of Medicaid eligibility.

Another important element in the ACA’s effort to expand health coverage is the expansion of Medicaid eligibility to anyone whose income is at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level ($15,282 for an individual; $31,322 for a family of four). The Supreme Court made expansion optional for states, and Maryland is one 26 states that have chosen to move forward with this expansion. The Maryland Health Connection reports that 82,473 currently uninsured Marylanders are signed up to be automatically enrolled in Medicaid coverage beginning in 2014.

An update from Maryland Health Connection can be found here.

For more information on the implementation of health care reform in Maryland, join us at the MACo winter conference.  A session titled “Report from the Front:  Rolling Out Maryland’s Health Benefits Exchange” will be held on Thursday, December 12 from 2:15 pm to 3:15 pm  to report on the progress of Maryland’s Health Exchange and the transition to health care under the Affordable Care Act.