A great day for America! Obamacare on track to meet original goal Washington (CNN) -- After a surge of sign-ups on enrollment deadline day, Obamacare is now on track to hit the White House's original target of 7 million people signing up, a senior administration official said Tuesday. More than 4.8 million visits were made to healthcare.gov and 2 million calls were made to the call center Monday, raising optimism that the goal would be met, the official said. The administration is awaiting final numbers from the federal and state exchanges, the official said.
Finally my subsidy kicks in today! I have horrible anxiety so I need medical mar1juana. The government provides weed for me!
Of course, the vast majority have kept their doctor, premiums have gone up at a slower rate than in the years before the ACA (saving everyone who has insurance money), we are covering more poor than ever before (and it would be even more if the GOP controlled states weren't gumming up the works), and all indications are that healthcare costs will go up at a slower rate than before. It isn't single payer, which would be dramatically more efficient, but it is far better than your ideological masters have led you to believe.
This thread was started a couple of months ago, and at the time, you had serious concerns about reaching the uninsured and the age/health mix of the people signing up. Has anything changed in that regard - has the data changed/improved/worsened or anything like that, from what you're seeing?
I can't answer that for another week, but the initial thought is that the uninsured are still not the ones buying policies at the rate expected. We have a lot of upgraders (better plans) a lot of life boat enrollments (lost some other form of coverage for some reason) and of course a lot of subsidized enrollments. The issue with the subsidized enrollments is that a lot of these people are not (at least in the last look) were not people buying insurance for the first time, but rather people who were in a risk pool, had regular insurance they were paying for on their own or people in small business situations that could drop their old coverage and get a subsidy. It's going to take time to know for sure though because there is a lot of inaccurate data given to healthcare.gov. Example: The only way healthcare.gov knows whether or not you had insurance previously is if you tell them. So you go onto the website and you are applying. You had a plan you paid for up through February and you want this plan to start 4/1. The question asks whether or not you are "replacing coverage." A lot of people are answering "no" to that question and some of the others about other coverage simply because they don't understand the terminology or because they don't have their id numbers, etc. handy and don't want to bother filling it out. It will be interesting to see what happens after the insurance companies finally process their membership rolls and we can get a look at the uninsured population that exists. My guess is that we didn't dent it all that much.
I've always been honest about the law. I don't oppose the law because of Obama. I was in favor of him passing healthcare reform. I have fundamental issues with the mechanics of this law because I think it could have been done better, but that doesn't mean I don't want the law to succeed. The law was written by the wrong people.
Makes sense - thanks. FWIW, the Rand study on the previous page seems to at least try to address these issues of how many "new" people are getting coverage, and their polling along with Gallup, seems to suggest some decent changes in the population of uninsured (declines of 10-20%), but I agree that there are too many moving pieces to really know much just yet. And I'm not sure what the original target was for year 1.
*If* this is accurate, this seems like an example of a success story in a red state that embraced Obamacare fully. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/obamacare-cuts-kentucky-uninsured-rate-by-40-percent Obamacare Cuts Kentucky's Uninsured Rate By 40 Percent Obamacare has cut Kentucky's uninsured population by more than 40 percent, signing up roughly 360,000 residents since enrollment opened up on Oct. 1, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. Some 75 percent of them -- 270,000 -- were previously uninsured. That means Kentucky's uninsured population of 640,000 has come down by 42 percent. The enrollment figures, which state officials relayed to the Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader, underscore the relative success of Kentucky's state-based Obamacare exchange compared to other states and, in some ways, the HealthCare.gov federal marketplace portal. Like the federal government, Kentucky has decided to give people who began their applications until April 15 to sign up for insurance on the exchanges. State officials told the Herald-Leader that those who are eligible for Medicaid can sign up after the March 31 deadline.
Interesting that Kentucky embraced Obama care so much. Part of the reason there are not more people enrolled is because so many states are against it every step of the way. I do not think Obama care is great but it beats having so many people with no insurance at all. I hope we have a single payer system in the near future.
Yeah it will be hard to near impossible to see real numbers. How many had previous coverage but lost it because turns out that they couldn't keep their coverage? How many signed up but never made a premium payment? How many signed up, made a premium payment, went to a doctor, got treatment, then stopped paying premiums?
Even if those numbers are WAY off (like, let's say, only 180,000 signed up), isn't that sill a pretty amazingly significant increase in just six months?
So for the first time in my 22 years, I have health insurance. I'm gonna get a much-needed physical very soon. I'm kinda excited. Thank you, Obama. Without the threat of your fines, I wouldn't have insurance!
One of my buddies didn't have health insurance prior to Jan 1st for YEARS. Gets signed up and week later has ACL surgery for his 3k deductible. Winner!
Kentucky didn't really embrace Obama. Kentucky was lucky. Their governor, Steve Beshear, had the power to implement the entirety of the ACA (both the exchange and medicaid expansion) via executive order. Kentucky has a split legislature currently (democrats have the house and republicans have the senate) so there was no way in hell that was going to pass the Kentucky senate. Lucky for them they had a Democratic governor who believed in the ACA and lucky for them, he had the power to implement the entire thing by himself. He had the ability to hand pick his staff to implement the website and the legislature more or less couldn't do anything about it. (not that they could anyway since the Democratic controlled house stonewalled Republican attempts to strip Beshear of his authority)
