The Official Obamacare Numbers And What They Mean For The Future Of Health Care Reform

[Bill USA]

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/11/13/2936311/100000-people-enrolled-private-obamacare-plan-administration-officials-claim/

The Obama administration released October’s enrollment numbers for HealthCare.gov on Wednesday afternoon, providing the first official glimpse into the administration’s progress towards implementing the Affordable Care Act. Here is the breakdown:

•106,185: filled out the application and have selected a plan through a federally run or state run exchange.

•79,391: filled out the application and have selected a plan through a state-run exchange.
•26,794: filled out the application and have selected a plan through a federal exchange.
•846,184: filled out the application but have not yet selected a plan

•1,509,883: individuals applying for coverage with completed applications
•1,081,592: total individuals eligible to enroll in an exchange plan
•396,261: eligible for Medicaid or CHIP.
•Enrollees by state: California 35,364; Federal exchange 26,794; New York 16,404; Washington 7,091; Kentucky 5,586.

Though the figures fall short of the 500,000 private enrollees the administration had predicted would take-up private coverage before the launch, the numbers come in the midst of highly-publicized technical difficulties with HealthCare.gov, during which neither the administration nor its allies could deploy a public campaign urging uninsured people to sign-up for coverage.

.... Officials point to the fact that just 123 people enrolled in Commonwealth Care — the Massachusetts health care exchange for subsidized care — during its first month in February of 2007 and after the first four months, just 15,560 of an estimated 80,000 uninsured who qualified for coverage signed up.

Here is a chart of enrollment for Commonwealth Care in 2007, the low-income program:


(more)

Let's see, after one month, 123 enrolled. After six months, 20,000. So, if that's an indicator then 106,000 would become, after six months (end of March 2014) 6 million.

[Mass]

1. Yes, but in MA, we had one year to enroll. Here, it was 6 months and it has been cut to 4 by the

website problems.

[Bill USA]

2. that's why I used 6 months of the data from Mass. The snafus of the website have definitely

created more problems. But the acceptance/interest was phenomenal (far beyond what they expected). Nothing like the slow start of Mass experience. But they may need to give people some more time. That would seem to be a good thing to do. But, I think they are going to wait and see if it will be necessary to do that - as it will create, i understand, some actuarial problems with insurers ...

[Doctor_J]

3. It sounds pretty low

We have 50 million in the US without health insurance (more without health care). These enrollment numbers don't seem to make much of a dent in that.

Unfortunately I think the ACA has pretty much eliminated all hope for Medicare For All, and it appears that it needs a lot of help just to do what it was supposed to do.

[Bill USA]

4. M$M repeats the 26,794 figure while 'forgetting' to mention the 864,000 who set up new accounts on

healthcare.gov in October which means basically in the last two weeks. These people are intending to get health insurance on the healthcare.gov website.

Over the last few days the GOP toadies of Corporate Media have relentlessly repeated the 26,794 figure for those who successfully signed up for health insurance on the government healthcare.gov website in October. But none of them, that I know of, made mention of another bit of data for October. That of the 846,184 who set up accounts on Healthcare.gov but have not yet selected a plan and the 1,509,883: individuals applying for coverage with completed applications.

Now, generally speaking, you can be pretty safe in saying that people who went to the trouble of setting up accounts on this site are serious about signing up for one of the health insurance plans. I think most people would agree that deciding which plan you want to sign up for is not a snap decision. It's not like choosing between buying a Snickers bar vs a Milky Way. Most people will probably print out the descriptions of the features of the various plans - in more than one level - to look it over at length. But, mentioning the 864,000 accounts successfully set -up covering 1.5 million people would not be consistent with the GOP's narrative that the ACA is an unmitigated disaster.


The GOP owes a lot to their toadies who dominate and run Corporate M$M.