Cigna Corp has enrolled between 75,000 and 100,000 people in Obamacare health plans during the first three months of enrollment, Chief Executive Officer David Cordani said on Tuesday at the Reuters Health Summit.
Of those, about two-thirds signed up through the public exchanges created as part of U.S. President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law, often called Obamacare, Cordani said on the day after the enrollment period for these plans ended. The rest signed up directly with Cigna.
Cigna, whose health insurance business focuses on large corporations, began offering the new individual plans in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Tennessee and Texas this year. The federal enrollment website HealthCare.gov sells plans for 36 states, while 14 others, including Colorado, run their own exchanges.
Enrollment began slowly because of technology problems on most exchanges, but a spike in demand ahead of the March 31 sign-up deadline means the government is on track to meet an initial target of 7 million people.
HealthCare.gov experienced sporadic outages on Monday under the load of traffic.
Technology issues and slow enrollment also contributed to a mix of customers that leaned heavily towards people older than expected during the early months. Cordani said compared to that group, younger people began signing up for the plans in recent weeks.
Cigna is looking at its new customers and trying to ascertain as much information as possible to decide about its participation in 2015 and if it will expand to more markets, Cordani said.
"We have a bias to extend but it's (to be determined) right now. There is a lot of work to be done over the next couple of months," Cordani said at the summit, held at the Reuters office in Washington D.C.
"We know where we would like to be," he said.
(Reporting by Caroline Humer; Editing by Jim Loney)
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