The White House said on Monday that more than 7 million Americans had signed up for health care insurance using the exchanges set up by President Obama's signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act.
Seven million was the White House's initial projection. After a rash of severe technical problems during the roll out of HealthCare.gov, the White House brought that number in line with the Congressional Budget Office's 6 million figure.
The rollout of the exchanges has been messy. HealthCare.gov, for example, was essentially useless for weeks after it was launched in October. The problems, however, were for the most part fixed and enrollment picked up.
As we've reported, the month of March has been a blockbuster for the new health care exchanges. The pace of enrollments picked up drastically, as the open enrollment deadline of March 31 approached. Some Americans faced fines if they did not sign up for insurance.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said during his regular press briefing that about 200,000 people signed up yesterday, bringing the total number of enrollees to 7.04 million by midnight last night.
It is not clear how many of those 7.04 million have paid for coverage.
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