Why Obamacare Enrollment Is Going Better Than You Think

Igor Volsky has six reasons:

1. More than 500,000 have signed up for insurance overall. Avalere Health, a consulting firm tracking sign-ups, estimates that at least 440,000 people have signed up for Medicaid and another 49,000 people enrolled in coverage in 12 states and the District of Columbia that are operating their own exchanges. Significantly, that state number don’t appear to include enrollment from California, Massachusetts, or Oregon. Thus, all told, more than 529,000 have enrolled in coverage.

2. People are enrolling despite an error-ridden website. Some enrollees — particularly the younger and healthier population who does not absolutely need coverage — may be putting off enrollment given HealthCare.gov’s technical glitches or are waiting until the website is fixed to sign up.

3. The Massachusetts experience predicted low early enrollment. In the first four months of enrollment in Commonwealth Care — the Massachusetts health care exchange for subsidized care — 15,560 of an estimated 80,000 uninsured who qualified for coverage signed up and after the first full year, one-third of the total eligible population — 122,000 people — became insured. The road to nearly universal coverage was gradual…

4. New public programs slowly ramp up to coverage. “Enrollment in new programs begins slowly and often takes several months to build momentum,” said Avalere CEO Dan Mendelson…

5. The government didn’t market Obamacare. Given the technical glitches plaguing the site, the administration and outside groups couldn’t deploy a big public campaign urging uninsured people to sign-up for coverage and did not run a heavy media campaign in the 36 states where the federal government is operating the exchanges.

6. People less likely to sign up now for coverage that begins in January.

By: Obewon

Supercomputing quantum-mechanic with progressive political passions for renewable energy, Inertial Confinement laser Fusion of seawater's hydrogen2 & h3. https://life.llnl.gov/ & https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/missions/energy_for_the_future/life/