Fewer than 12 dozen Iowans acquired private health insurance through the federal healthcare-dot-gov website during its first troubled month of operation. A report from the Obama Administration indicates that during October applications were submitted through the federal website for coverage of nearly 11-thousand individual Iowans. Almost 45-hundred of those Iowans have incomes low enough that they qualify for coverage through Medicaid.

Another two-thousand of them qualified for government subsidies to buy private insurance. However, only 136 were able to complete the application process and buy a private insurance policy during the month of October.

Government subsidies for buying private insurance are only available to those who use the website to buy insurance. According to the Obama Administration report, over 255-thousand Iowans are either eligible for the subsidy to buy private insurance or are eligible for Medicaid. Almost 200-thousand of those are either working full-time, or someone in their household has a full-time job. The application deadline through health-care-dot-gov is December 15th, but the policies do not take effect until January 1st.

(Radio Iowa)