For most Americans, the enrollment period to sign up for insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act ends tomorrow.John Yang has a look at the numbers so far.William, the latest government figures show that, as of last Saturday, more than 4.1 million people had signed up for ACA coverage.That's down nearly 12 percent from last year, and the number of new enrollments is down almost 20 percent,this despite stable premiums and more plans available.Now, millions more are expected to sign up or be reenrolled by tomorrow's deadline.To discuss what's going on, we're joined by Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for Kaiser Health News.Julie, thanks and welcome. Why is enrollment down from last year?Well, there are a lot of reasons. A big one, of course,is that Congress last year repealed what's called the mandate penalty, so if you don't have health insurance,you will no longer have to pay a tax penalty for not having it, although a lot of people actually don't even know that.The economy is better. More people have jobs. They don't need their own health insurance. There are some smaller things.In Virginia, they're expanding Medicaid, so you have got tens of thousands,more than 100,000 people who were getting ACA coverage who will now be able to get Medicaid.And the Trump administration allowed these short-term plans, these alternative kinds of plans, that might be cheaper if you're healthy.And there are some number of people who are probably going to sign up for those plans instead,so there are a lot of things that are contributing to this.So, even though enrollment is down, that doesn't mean necessarily that people, that coverage is down?We don't know yet. We won't find that out for several more months.
对于大多数美国人来说，根据平价医疗法案参加保险计划的报名期将于明天截止。约翰・杨了解了一下目前的报名情况。威廉好。最新的政府数据显示，截至上周六为止，已经有410多万人报名参加了平价医疗法案。同比下降了12%，而新加入的用户也同比下降了近20%，虽然目前保险费日趋稳定，也有更多的保险项目可供选择。目前，预计还会有上百人在明天截止日期来临之前报名参加医疗法案。为了讨论这个话题，我们邀请了朱莉・瑞福纳，她是凯撒健康新闻驻华盛顿的首席记者。朱莉，感谢并欢迎您来到现场。想请教您，为什么参加比率会较去年下降呢？有很多原因。当然了，其中一个重要原因就是：去年国会废止了所谓的授权处罚，所以如果你没有健康保险，也不必再为没交健康保险而付税务罚款了。不过很多人还不知道这件事。美国经济好转了，更多人找到工作了。他们不再需要健康保险了，但还有一些小问题。弗吉尼亚州正在扩张医疗补助计划，所以现在有很多人，至少是10万多已经参加了平价医疗法案的人现在可以享受医疗补助计划的福利。而特朗普政府是允许这些短期计划存在的，这些都是替代性的计划。身体健康的人支出的成本会更低。不过，还是会有一些人报名参加这些计划。这其中是有很多促成因素的。所以，虽然参加率下降了，但这并不意味着平价医疗法案覆盖的人数减少了。这一点还不确定，还需要几个月的时间才能知道。
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