Report: More than 164,000 sign up through health exchanges

OLYMPIA — More than 164,000 people in Washington State have signed up and paid for health insurance under President Barack Obama’s health care law.

According to numbers released Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that nearly 78 percent of those, or more than 127,000 people in the state, were receiving tax subsidies to help with the cost. A Supreme Court decision earlier this summer upheld insurance subsidies in all 50 states.

Nationwide, about 9.9 million people have signed up and paid for health insurance under the new law. Tuesday’s report was the first update since June on how the health care law’s insurance markets are performing in all 50 states.

Obama’s law offers subsidized private insurance through online markets also called exchanges, plus an expanded version of Medicaid in states that adopt it.