Nearly 6.5 million people in 2015 HealthCare.gov plans: U.S. agency

(Reuters) - Nearly 6.5 million people either selected or were enrolled in a new individual insurance plan for 2015 on the HealthCare.gov website through Dec. 26, the U.S. government health agency said on Tuesday. HealthCare.gov sells plans for 37 states while the remaining states sell individual insurance on their own online exchanges. In 2014, the 37 states represented 68 percent of the total nationwide enrollment of around 7 million people, the agency said. The government has said it is aiming for more than 9 million enrollees for 2015. The remaining 14 states plus the District of Columbia have enrolled more than 600,000 people, the government said, providing a first look at enrollment nationwide, but one that still lacked re-enrollment numbers for many states. Some information was not included because states running their own exchanges have different deadlines for automatic re-enrollment or for tallying enrollment data. California and New York have had 161,752 new enrollees but did not provide data on any re-enrollments, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said. Another seven states reported that 153,011 people had selected a plan or actively re-enrolled, but did not provide figures for automatically re-enrolled consumers. Five states, including Connecticut and Kentucky, said they had a total of 318,075 plan selections and re-enrollments. The exchanges, created under the national healthcare reform law, began selling coverage for 2014 last year. Enrollment for 2015 opened on Nov. 15 and runs through Feb. 15, 2015. HealthCare.gov earlier this month automatically re-enrolled consumers who had not actively chosen a new plan for next year. (Reporting by Caroline Humer; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jeffrey Benkoe)