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Article snippet: WASHINGTON — More than 600,000 people signed up last week for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, significantly beating the pace of prior years as consumers defied President Trump’s assertion that the marketplace was collapsing. In a report on the first four days of open enrollment, the Trump administration said Thursday, 601,462 people selected health plans in the federal marketplace, HealthCare.gov. Of that number, 137,322 consumers, or 23 percent, were new to the marketplace and did not have coverage this year through the federal insurance exchange. “It’s the biggest start to open enrollment ever,” said Lori Lodes, an Obama administration official and a founder of Get America Covered, a nonprofit group helping people get information about insurance options. “It shows that people really want to get health insurance and value it.” The surge in sign-ups came after Mr. Trump and Republicans in Congress had repeatedly tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, warning that markets were imploding and rates exploding. “Obamacare is finished,” Mr. Trump said at a cabinet meeting last month. “It’s dead. It’s gone. It’s no longer — you shouldn’t even mention. It’s gone. There is no such thing as Obamacare anymore.” The numbers tell a different story. Sign-ups averaged more than 150,000 a day last week. By contrast, they averaged 66,000 a day in the first week of open enrollment in November 2014 and 77,600 a day in the first week of enrollment in November 2015.... Link to the full article to read more