Avik Roy
Forbes
4/9/2014
Last week, I wrote about an article in the Los Angeles Times, on a then-as-yet unpublished report from the RAND Corporation. The report indicated that only one-third of Obamacare’s purported 7.1 million exchange sign-ups were from the previously uninsured. But Noam Levey, the author of the Times article, didn’t disclose RAND’s actual findings as to the actual number of previously uninsured exchange enrollees. Well, now we know why. RAND published the full report yesterday; it indicates that Obamacare’s exchanges only enrolled 1.4 million previously uninsured individuals.
That 1.4 million is out of a total of 3.9 million exchange enrollees overall. That is to say, a little over a third of enrollees—36 percent—were previously uninsured. RAND’s figures don’t take into account the last few weeks of the Obamacare open enrollment period, and they contain a substantial margin of error, due to the study’s small sample size. (RAND surveyed 2,425 individuals aged 18 to 64; the 1.4 million figure has a margin of error of 700,000, meaning that there is a 95 percent probability that the actual number is between 700,000 and 2.1 million previously uninsured enrollees.)…
The article continues, with video, at Forbes.
Also at the site, Here’s How Much Health Plan Premiums Spiked Over The Last Four Years Of Obamacare’s Rollout
Related: #Obamacare success! New Medicaid enrollee turned down by 96 doctors
One of the oft-stated goals of the Affordable Care Act was insuring the uninsured. For those who couldn’t afford insurance even with the new subsidies, states could expand their Medicaid offerings with (temporary) help from the federal government (i.e., taxation and borrowing). Great, right? Even if you don’t make enough to afford private insurance, you still get medical care, right?
Not if the doctor refuses to take Medicare…
Sen. Rand Paul: Obama Is Trying to Hide ObamaCare’s ‘Sticker Shock’ Until After November (video)
…VAN SUSTEREN: “It’s interesting, even Chet Burrell, chief officer for Blue Cross-Blue Shield says it’s likely premium rate shocks are coming. And so that — they are warning us, the insurance companies.”
PAUL: “Even the president, I think, is anticipating this because the president has moved back the enrollment period, mysteriously, I don’t know why, he has changed the enrollment period from like November 15th to December 1, after the election. So they are hoping that the sticker shock and the turmoil that’s going to happen when people see their insurance premiums going up dramatically — they want to wait until after the election. I think that’s dishonest.”…
