By William E. Gibson, Washington Bureau

 

WASHINGTON - This weekend will bring the last big push to sign up for Obamacare.

 

Volunteers will fan across Florida, urging people to buy health insurance plans, as officials prepare for a surge of applications before open enrollment ends Monday.

 

Don't wait to apply, advisers are telling the uninsured. And ignore the talk about an extended deadline. A grace period for latecomers may pertain only to those who have had problems with the enrollment website or have already started an application.

 

The throngs of volunteers promoting Obamacare on college campuses, at community rallies and at public "enroll-a-thons" in South and Central Florida are intent on getting nearly everybody insured, including the young and healthy. But Florida, despite nearly a half-million applications so far, likely will be left with big gaps in insurance coverage.

 

Those leading the enrollment campaign foresee a late onslaught of interested consumers, similar to the rush to file tax returns before midnight April 15.

 

"Most people are like me. I'm 29, and unless my mom makes me do something, I'll wait until the last minute," said Ray Paultre of Miami, the organizing director in Florida for Enroll America, a group hired to spearhead the signup campaign. "When people say the youth are waiting until the last minute, we can't argue with that."

 

Starting this year, nearly everyone is required to have health insurance or pay a penalty of $95 or 1 percent of their income, whichever is higher. Federal officials said this week they will provide an extension for people who were snagged while applying at Healthcare.gov or have started the process.

 

"We view it more like a grace period, the same way that voters who are waiting in line at 7 o'clock when the polls close are still allowed to vote," Paultre said. "It's not an opportunity to wait and see what happens. That's not the message we want out there. We want people to get enrolled by March 31."

 

The weekend enrollment blitz will focus on urban counties in Florida — including Broward, Palm Beach and Orange — where the rate of uninsured is highest. Before Obamacare, one in five Floridians were uninsured, one of the highest rates in the nation.

 

President Barack Obama gave a pep talk by phone to volunteers across the country on Thursday and announced that 6 million Americans had signed up for insurance plans. More than 442,000 Floridians had enrolled by the end of last month, and 90 percent of them qualified for a subsidized lower rate or some form of assistance.

 

"It works if you give it a shot," said James Cain, 54, of Cocoa, who lost his insurance in 2008 when he was laid off from his job.

 

"It wasn't a perfect process by any means," he said of his early encounters with the Obamacare website. "I started back in October, three days after the website was released, and it was pretty much a disaster. But I didn't give up. Given the opportunity to make choices, which is what the Affordable Care Act gave me, I can pick something that works."

 

Cain got a subsidized rate of about $450 a month for a plan that otherwise would have cost twice as much for himself and two daughters.

 

Others say they have fared far worse, especially those with insurance plans that did not provide the coverage required by the health care law.

 

"Out of the blue they canceled me because my plan didn't meet the standards," said John Walker, 48, a land surveyor in Orlando. "But it's the same plan I've had for seven years. When I tried to buy a new plan that meets their standards, it was three times as much money. I can't afford it."

 

He and other critics suspect that most of those signing up for plans were not the uninsured but people replacing policies that were canceled.

 

Many Florida residents are bound to remain uninsured because the estimated 825,000 immigrants living in Florida illegally are excluded from benefits and from the Obamacare website, a shopping place for insurance. Thousands of others are eligible for Medicaid under federal law but cannot enter the program because Florida has refused to expand it.

 

But Obamacare promoters — notably U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston, who hosted a town hall by telephone this week to encourage enrollment — are taking to the airwaves and hosting community events to reach as many people as possible.

 

"We go directly to consumers and into neighborhoods," Paultre said. "It's been a fun ride."

 

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/fl-obamacare-enrollment-last-push-20140327,0,2659463.story