Open enrollment for Maine's online health insurance marketplace ends this Wednesday, but numbers are already higher than last year.
Hilary Schneider, the director of Maine's marketplace, said roughly 63,000 people have signed up so far.
Schneider said enhanced premium tax credits make coverage more affordable, especially for middle-income Mainers who are self employed. But she's concerned that those incentives will expire at the end of the year, and more Mainers could become uninsured.
"That means that they may not be able to be self-employed, but also they'll have less money to spend in our economy," she said. "So it not only affects our uninsured rates, but it affects other parts of our economy as well."
She and other health care advocates are urging Congress to make the enhanced premium tax credits permanent.