This is a great day for our nation. We are making progress toward health insurance for everyone, despite massive resistance by political opponents of the president.
And this number does not include the further millions of young people who continue to be covered by their parents' insurance, including some of our own children.
Not to mention ending the injustice of denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions.
In a few years, Obamacare will be part of the fabric of the American safety net. And those who oppose it now will deny they were ever against it.
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11 comments:
I can see your knee jerking..
Yes, and Kim Jong-il was recently re-elected by a 100% majority with a 100% voter turnout.
Is there a substantive criticism here?
The criticism is that you reflexively support Obama and the ACA.
I think that the Affordable Care Act is a huge step forward for the country.
I mostly support Pres. Obama, though not in all things.
Do you have a substantive criticism of Obamacare, or the 7 million newly insured, or the continuation of young adult insurance, or the end of denial for pre-existing conditions?
Substantive criticism: How many of those who signed up have actually paid the premium? How many were approached by the paid "volunteers" and "helped" to sign up, with no intent of actually paying the required premium? How many were actually uninsured--the folks the ACA was supposed to help? How many will be shocked at the huge premium increases when the insurance companies determine that not enough young healthy folks actually enrolled? The "most transparent" White House in history refuses to say.
Additional question: How come the Democrats took care of everyone except military dependents. Everybody else gets to keep their kids on their policies until age 26. Military personnel (active duty and retired) cannot. Their kids get bounced at 18 (or 23 if they go to college full time). As one who has felt the love the Democrats have for our military (except in election years) for nearly 50 years, I really want to know.
"While Tricare largely is viewed as a comprehensive health care program, there are disparities between the military plan and the ACA’s requirements of private insurers and state exchanges. Congress rectified the oversight of coverage for unmarried children by approving the Tricare Young Adult program shortly after the law passed,"
http://www.armytimes.com/article/20130926/BENEFITS06/309260025/Affordable-Care-Act-No-impact-Tricare-some-coverage-isn-t-equal
Wasn't it a mere 4-6 weeks ago that VP "Crazy Uncle Joe" Biden was prepping us for failure when he reported that the actual signup may be less than 5 Million at the end of the open enrollment period? Then, in the last hour Obama announces that they have not only met their goal, but also surpassed it with a total enrollment of 7.1 Million. Does this not smell a little fishy to you? Hence my admittedly sarcastic reference to Kim Jong-il's re-election metrics. Do you actually believe/trust any statistical bantering of positive achievement (propaganda) that comes out of Washington these days, from either side of the isle? I don't.
Let's consider that 7.1 Million is a true statistic. What does it even mean? How many of those alleged 7.1 Million had coverage before the Obamacare mandates that were canceled and had no choice but to sign up? How many of these 7.1M have or will actually pay their premium? How many of these 7.1M chose the newly implemented option of merely checking a box on the website that states that they intend to or would like to enroll but haven't due to lack of understanding of the internet or whatever? None of these metrics have been stated.
The only true measure of Obamacare success is to provide the true delta of those who now have actual health care coverage (i.e. enrolled and paid premiums) v. those who did not prior to the Obamacare roll out. Due to the above stated reasoning, the number is surely much lower than 7.1 M, but even if that was a true number, it is still only 18% of the nations 39 Million uninsured.
So can Obamacare be deemed such a success, I think not professor.
I live with college students - I can easily believe that many people did not pay attention to the deadline until the last minute.
Seven million is a fine start, and a big number. We don't know how many of those are truly new to health insurance, but the number will certainly be in the millions.
This would be an OK first round even if everyone had been on board. The fact that this number of people signed up despite the massive screw-up with the website, and despite the massive resistance by the political opposition, seems like success to me.
Universal health insurance is a long-term project. As each year goes by, more people will decide that paying for the privilege of not having insurance is a foolish choice, and will sign up.
Success can not be accurately qualified or quantified until such time that true and complete metrics are provided. Until then, 7.1 Million is nothing more than a impressive sounding number, realistically nothing more than lip service and spin.
The 7.1 million are +not+ newly insured. That is the total number of policies applied for. This number includes the millions of people that were previously insured but had their policies canceled as well as those that have not yet paid for their policies.
You can notice this in the official White House statements that always announce 7.1 million people enrolled in private health plans.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/04/01/more-7-million-americans-have-enrolled-private-health-coverage-under-affordable-care
From the preliminary numbers, there does appear to be a net gain in the number of Americans insured - this is a good thing!
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