By John Murawski
jmurawski@newsobserver.comMarch 29, 2014 Updated 18 hours ago

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It’s been six years since Beard, a 29-year-old sales clerk at Sorry State Records, had health insurance, a fact attested by the lump of electrical tape holding his eyeglasses together. Beard toils 50-60 hours a week, holding down a second job as a cook at the Remedy Diner in Raleigh, and said that health insurance – even with generous subsidies – is beyond his $20,000 yearly pay.

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Through February, slightly more than 200,000 North Carolinians had selected an individual insurance plan out of an eligible pool exceeding 1 million residents. The number of March enrollments will be released soon.

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But in North Carolina, only 25 percent of enrollments through the federal insurance exchange are in the 18-34 age group, even though 40 percent of the state’s uninsured are in that age group. If North Carolina enrollments stay flat in March for this group, then insurance companies could pay out more money than they take in, and may raise rates next year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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North Carolina has more than 600 trained navigators and in-person helpers working on outreach and enrollment for the Legal Aid Society, Alcohol and Drug Council, CapitalCare Collaborative, Community Care of North Carolina, and other social service organizations. Through February, 91 percent of the state’s insurance enrollments have qualified for federal subsidies, pushing North Carolina to one of the top insurance enrollment rates in the country and also skewing the state to one of the highest rates for subsidies.

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