Friday, March 28, 2014

Obamacare at six million and counting

 
Ahead of schedule, Obamacare enrollments hit 6 million this week, meeting the projection made by the Congressional Budget Office. This means that MILLIONS of Americans now have access to cheaper and better healthcare, with significant consumer protections from insurance company hijinks. This is a FANTASTIC thing.

It should be noted at this great news that if the Republican party had control of the Senate as well as the House, they would pass a bill TODAY repealing the law and throwing those millions back into the good old days of no healthcare and the possibility of bankruptcy if they got sick. The Republicans continue to do all they can to thwart the law. Repeal would hurt MILLIONS of Americans, but they’ve voted 52 times to do just that. Republican governors have already screwed over millions of their own residents by refusing to extend Medicaid at NO COST to their state, just to put a thumb in President Obama’s eye.

Why the hell are people still voting for these psychopaths?

2 comments:

Eric Haas said...

That’s six million sign-ups, not six million enrollments. In California, for example, 15% of those who sign-up don’t pay for their first month’s premium, and therefore aren’t enrolled. How many of those sign-ups are people who were previously among the long-term uninsured? And how many of those sign-ups are young, healthy people who are needed to balance out the costs of older/sicker people?

I’m not saying we should repeal it, but it’s far from clear that this is working yet.

Ipecac said...

Even if 15% drop, that's still over 5 million enrollees. And that doesn't include those covered by the Medicaid expansion, those who bought insurance directly from insurance companies and who benefit from the consumer protections, or those under 26 years old who stayed on their family plan. Count all of those and the number goes to 13 million.

The number of youth seems to be around 28%. The insurance companies don't seem to concerned about that. We'll see.