Thursday, December 12, 2013

Unforgivable

The ACA Death Spiral blog:

... if 2 million obtain insurance through the Exchanges but more people (3.5 million is a prevailing estimate from sources ranging from Forbes to Jonathan Gruber) lose their current individual health insurance, that’s a net decrease in the number of insured.  And if we add in the loss of 100,000 or so people from the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan that likewise is terminated or those who heretofore were in various state high risk pools, there is a serious risk that the Affordable Care Act will have decreased the number with private health insurance. [snip]

... it may well be that for every such success story apparently to be catalogued by paid grants from the government, there is another who had health insurance tailored to their needs (such as policies for the 50 and over set that did not cover maternity expenses) who now find themselves priced out of the health insurance market with its Essential Health Benefits requirement (section 1302 of the ACA).

Ace of Spades:

Just about 1.2 million people have gained health coverage through Obamacare, according to new federal data released Wednesday morning. Approximately 365,000 of those people have purchased private insurance and 803,000 have been determined to be eligible for the public Medicaid program.

1- At least 5 million people have lost coverage due to policies being cancelled thanks to ObamaCare. So that 365,000 number is insignificant compared to that. There will no doubt be more uninsured on January 1 than there were on October 1. Don't let them get away with pretending "1.2 million people who didn't have insurance have it now!".

Liberals will point to the new "enrollments" (and assume they will pay and become actual customers) while ignoring the previously uninsured who won't get coverage in time or be able to afford the new rates and deductibles.

The are simply redistributing health insurance from those who paid for it to those who didn't. This is a victory in their minds.

Sarah Kliff at the Washington Post’s Wonkblog:

These are Obamacare's biggest losers: People whose current plans have been canceled but who are having trouble getting through HealthCare.Gov to purchase coverage by Dec. 23 -- the deadline for buying insurance that begins Jan. 1.

The concern is particularly acute for patients with expensive medical conditions, who rely on their coverage for doctor visits and drug refills that would otherwise break the bank. [snip]

Those facing a potential coverage gap include an estimated 15 million people who purchase coverage for themselves on the individual market, many of whom received cancellation notices because their policies did not meet health-care law requirements.

Megan McArdle:

That means that in theory, almost 10 percent of the population of Vermont needs to sign up for insurance in the first three weeks of December, just to avoid losing coverage. Fortunately, Vermont is a small state, so that’s a small number -- fewer than 60,000 people. The bad news is that Vermont’s exchanges haven’t been working too well. The governor has belatedly unveiled contingency plans: Individuals can extend their 2013 coverage for three months, and small businesses can sign up directly with a carrier. So hopefully, most people won’t actually lose coverage. Nonetheless, for the state of Vermont, 2.5 percent of its population signed up represents a disastrous failure, not a roaring success. That figure means the state hasn’t even managed to sign up the people who already had insurance, much less cover anyone new. And if it can’t get things working better by March, when those temporary renewals expire, then Green Mountain Care will have resulted in a net loss of insurance coverage for the state.

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