ACA Enrollment Deadline, March 31

[Lou]

In the interest of full disclosure, my wife and I enrolled for insurance through the ACA marketplace back in December, due to her uninsurability through the private market (she has a pre-existing condition that rendered her ineligible for private insurance).

That said, I have been reading with interest about Democrat celebration over the fact that 7 million Americans had successfully signed up for coverage through the ACA marketplace by the March 31 deadline. Considering the horrendously flawed roll-out of that insurance marketplace--and the fact that 47 million Americans remain uninsured--I cannot help but be reminded of this short YouTube video. Make sure you watch it to the end, as the sting is in the tail.

[Haruo]

I'm interested in knowing how many of the 7 million were previously uninsured vs. how many used the marketplace to shop for a better deal vs. how many used it because their prior insurance was discontinued or had the rent raised precipitously...

[Lou]

[Sandy]

The ACA website is just the federal exchange. There were several states, about 18 or 19, who also had exchanges. As the President himself said, no law is perfect, and personally, I'd have preferred a single-payer overhaul, but there are more Americans with insurance now than there were before March 31, and that's going to make a difference in the long run. Interesting that in the states that have exchanges, and participated in the Medicaid program, insurance premiums actually dropped in price.

I suspect, with polling data now showing more people approving ACA than opposed to it, there will be another round of lies about it. I'm inclined not to believe anything that comes from a conservative source. I call the practice of telling gigantic whoppers "Palinizing."

[Haruo]

I agree with much of what you said, Sandy, but I'd still like to crunch the data myself rather than be fed it by folks with agendas (including the Administration, and "the Liberals", as well as "the Conservatives"). Having spent more than a decade in data collection for the BRFSS, I have a pretty good idea just how little unbiased statistical information is published, and how (perhaps unintentionally) biased the questions asked can be and often, maybe usually, are. People set goals for what they think the country should look like when they are actuarially likely to die, and then they lie, cheat and twist facts to make it happen. All for the greater good, or their personal good, or their grandchildren's perceived good...

[Lou]

[Sandy]

I don't think it is early for celebratory dancing. The opposition has lied through their teeth about all of the things that this law would do, and that it contained, in order to stop it from being enacted after a majority of both houses passed it. They've continued to do everything they possibly can, including spending millions of dollars and taking dozens of pointless votes, wasting hours of congress' time, and they've had their extremist mouthpieces blasting it from every side. The GOP lost ground in the senate, and the 2012 Presidential election campaigning against it, and they lost the state house in Virginia because they were campaigning against it during the time that the website was having problems. Seven million was the goal for the federal exchange, the state exchanges are in addition to that number.

This is the first health care reform that a US president has been able to achieve. As the President said himself, it is not a perfect law, and there are ways that people can "cheat" the system to come out better than they would otherwise. But there's no denying it has made a dent, perhaps a significant one, in the number of uninsured, and that will have an impact on both insurance companies and health care providers, not to mention on the people who now have insurance and can get medical care without having to go to an ER and leave behind an unpaid bill.

It seems that there's a lot of agreement among the American people, as well, now that they seem to be breaking out of the cocoon of negative misinformation and people are seeing that the difference is a plan which helps Americans get health insurance as opposed to a plan which is designed to keep more money in the hands of the super rich. The polls are beginning to turn, showing that a majority of Americans now favor the ACA, and that it is not going to have much of an impact in any of the congressional or senate elections in 2014.

[Lou]

[Sandy]

Actually, according to the reports, 7.1 million registered on the federal exchange website, and about 4 million more registered with the state exchanges, along with an increase of about 1.5 million in the total number of new insurance policies purchased privately. With all of that new business, you'd think that insurance companies would be happy, and that the principle of supply and demand would kick in and drop the prices of premiums. Oh, yeah, that's right. It did, in the states that participated in the program and set up the exchanges.

This Presidential administration hasn't touted a lot of its successes. Why not trumpet this one? It's an election year, and the do nothing GOP has absolutely nothing positive on which to run. The only thing they have to offer is the status quo on health care, because they have no plan of their own. I think it is probably a pretty well calculated political move on the President's part to draw a line under this achievement, since the GOP is putting all of its eggs in that basket, but the voters are responding to an improving economy, and the voting constituencies that the GOP has to have to win are moving in the Democrats' direction on immigration reform, minimum wage, and the stock market records and dropping unemployment are also in the Democrats favor, along with the size and scope of individual campaign contributions. And I would guess that a significant majority of those who signed up for insurance will vote Democrat. Might be a nice margin of victory in that group of 10 million or more.