Very few people are sold on Obamacare: enrollments pathetically low

http://www.nationaljournal.com/heal...-still-time-for-obamacare-to-succeed-20131105

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on Tuesday invoked her own state's experience with health reform as evidence that there is still time for Obamacare implementation to succeed.

"What I can tell you all from [the Massachusetts] experience is that getting everyone into the health care system wasn't easy and it wasn't quick," the senator said in a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing Tuesday on the troubled rollout of HealthCare.gov. The committee is hearing testimony from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner on the status of improvements to the website.

President Obama spoke in Boston last week about the success of health care reform in Massachusetts under Mitt Romney's governorship. The Affordable Care Act has been compared to the state's system on a larger scale.

"Our enrollment period for subsidized insurance lasted almost a full year, yet it was only in the last month that 20 percent of the total pool got themselves enrolled," Warren said. "We learned in Massachusetts that when it comes to enrolling in health care, many wait until the end to get it done."

Tavenner agreed, saying that the administration always expected the greatest enrollment surges to come in mid-December and at the end of February. Those who more desperately need insurance are expected to be part of the December wave to get coverage beginning Jan. 1. Younger, healthier individuals—the group crucial to keeping overall premium rates low—are expected to enroll close to the March 31 deadline, to avoid the individual-mandate penalty.

"It's important to get the problems fixed in November," Tavenner said. "But yes, I think we have time."

Warren emphasized the importance of looking at the bigger picture in implementation. "The experience in Massachusetts suggests it might be prudent for us to take a deep breath about this," she said.



CORRECTION: This article previously quoted Sen. Warren as saying 25 percent of the Massachusetts pool enrolled in the last month of the enrollment period. She actually said 20 percent.

 

Biased opinion is biased

Need more information

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapot...000-enrollees-and-five-million-cancellations/

The Obamacare Exchange Scorecard: Around 100,000 Enrollees And Five Million Cancellations

One official told Amy Goldstein and Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post that “the official figure will include people who have paid for a plan and those who simply picked a plan and put it in their shopping cart.” Most private companies aren’t allowed to count as “sales” people who put items in their electronic shopping carts, but haven’t yet paid. But politics triumphs economics. Goldstein and Kliff write that, “according to one person with knowledge of the figures, slightly fewer than 40,000 people had selected a [federal exchange-based] health plan as of last week.”

hahaha - talk about padding the stats. And I thought Obamacare was supposed to insure more people...not less. And wait until the stats really come out. I dare say that the sick signed up and the youth will just pay the fine so this turns out to be a tax on the well.

 

I think people here know how I feel about Obamacare.

With that said, early enrollment numbers are useless. Enrollments will trend up as you get closer to the deadline, but aside from that, the most significant number is actually what the net enrollment numbers are for the carriers. Are they seeing increased purchases outside of the exchange?

I said from the beginning that exchange participation would be low. It was low in Mass.

 

Can we see the numbers for enrollment in Medicaid expansion?

 

As usual, you misunderstand. Enrollments are a poor metric at this point in the process because many will not sign up until the last minute, as Senator Warren explained using Massachusetts as an example.

Biased partisans will be biased, I suppose.

 

Why did this need a new thread for you to say the same thing you've said over and over? We get it. You don't like Obama or his attempts to improved a broken healthcare system. Or anything he ever said. I'm guessing if he had something nice to say about one of your family members you'd find a way to resent that too.

For someone you say you despise, he controls your every thought.

You're mad that more people aren't enrolling, you're mad about people who have to enroll, you're mad about how many people thought about enrolling but didn't...

You just mad?

I don't even know if I will have to change insurance or not, but I know from the numbers I'm seeing that if I do, it won't be significantly more than what I pay now, and chances are it appears it would be less. I don't know if I like the 'act' or not, and I'm not sure how so many people that already hated Obama can be so sure about something that has barely initiated, except to say that the outrage is no longer at all believable, and doesn't influence someone like myself who won't judge it according to how we feel about the person driving it.

I guess you know it's transparent, but it doesn't make you look like a reasonable individual when you and others of your ilk continually rail against everything the man does, not based on its merits, but just because you hate him.

Maybe you don't care about being reasonable.

 

I bet the people who are signing up are the people who couldn't get insurance before, and the the young people etc. who are healthy aren't. This will cause the insurance premiums to shift up. Given people hate obamacare so much I don't know why he didn't get a single payer system passed. They would have hated that too, but if he had got that through he would have gone down as one of the top 5 presidents ever in terms of impact to this country.

 

Obviously you don't follow politics much. Republicans have zero interest in much of anything that's ever been proposed by Obama in fact the surest way to have a Republican be against something is for Obama to support it.

 

Probably comparing apples to oranges, but interesting statistics nonetheless about online cart abandonment in e-commerce.

http://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate

67.44% – average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate

 

He had a super majority at one point. He could have done it if he said screw working with the republicans.

 

No, he couldn't. There were Democrats that were going to vote against and would have if he had tried a single payer.

 

Most reasonable people see how the GOP was completely, utterly unwilling to work with Obama on anything at all.

 

You mean when he was trying to work with republicans? Oh wait, you said he never tries to work with republicans.