By expert analysis it appears that the Obamacare enrollment fell way short of the 7 million figure by 6 million.
The seven million enrollment figure that the administration
is bandying about is misleading. The actual number of uninsured covered by the
marketplace will be much smaller. For starters, if the current trend continues,
20 percent of the seven million will drop out without paying. Out of the
remaining 5.6 million, only about half were likely previously uninsured. Why?
Because reliable early surveys found that a whopping 65 to 90 percent of those
flocking to the exchange already had insurance. Even assuming that uninsured
people were waiting until the end to sign up, it is hard to see how that figure
would exceed 50 percent, given that six out of 10 uninsured people surveyed by
the Kaiser Family Foundation recently didn’t know about the March 31 deadline
and after being told about it, half of them still planned to remain uninsured
The administration claims that the ACA’s expansion of
Medicaid has allowed four million to 4.5 million uninsured people to gain
coverage. But a substantial portion of that stems from regular Medicaid growth
(unrelated to Obamacare). In January, Real Clear Politics’ Sean Trende
estimated the number to be closer to 400,000, although he expected things to
improve as the sign-up deadline approached. And last month, Avalere, a health
advisory company, put the new enrollees due to Obamacare at 2.4 million to 3.5
million. (Some states are reporting higher rates of uninsured Medicaid
enrollment, but it is unclear how representative or reliable they are or how
many of these uninsured might have been covered even under the old eligibility
criteria.)
Also what is misleading in the numbers is the provision that allows 26-year-olds to stay on
their parents’ plans. The administration claims that this provision has
extended coverage to three million young people. But that’s a false assumption,
given that at least some portion of them are college students with university
coverage or self-employed with insurance from the individual market. Forbes’
Avik Roy estimates that the real figure is closer to 890,000, meaning that the administration’s
figure represents an over 200 percent exaggeration.
All of this adds up to less than seven million uninsured
being covered by Obamacare, which means that the program fell 46 percent short
of CBO’s 13 million mark
Neil Cavuto of Fox News also reported the numbers to be way off.
"Now you know.
That 7.1 million enrollee figure the White House has been
whooping up? Kind of off. Actually... kind of way off.
And Thursday night on Fox Business we told you how much off.
Not a million fewer enrollees. A million net new, paying
enrollees.
Yes, we crunched the data, separated out as best we could
those who already had insurance, so weren't exactly "new" to getting
insurance. Then, with the help of an expert, separated from the remaining group
those actually paying for the coverage.
And lo and behold we arrived at that slightly more than 1
million paying ObamaCare customers.
Now, the White House fumed that we were leaving out the
millions signing up for Medicaid and kids staying on their parents' policies
longer, thanks to ObamaCare. Fair enough, we told them, which is also why we
excluded the millions more Americans who lost their health care coverage
altogether.
We agreed to compare apples to apples and oranges to
oranges. But safe to say in the end, this drove a lot of FBN viewers watching all
this bananas.
Keith in Key Biscayne, Florida --"We torpedoed our
entire health care system...for this?"
Barbara in Hackettstown, New Jersey --"Are you kidding
me? A million net new enrollees? In a country of 320 million people? Come
again?"
No, you got it right, Barbara. Put another way -- 46 million
uninsured before all this, best case scenario, 45 million uninsured after all
this. And according to the CBO, super best case scenario 10 years from now? 30
million still uninsured after all of this."
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