Enrollment in the Health Insurance Marketplace surged to eight million at the end of the first enrollment period, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today. The final enrollment reporting period spans from October 1, 2013, to March 31, 2014, and includes “in line” and other enrollment activity (such as people enrolling due to a change in life circumstance) reported through Saturday, April 19, 2014.
Importantly, 2.2 million (28 percent) of those who selected a Marketplace plan were young adults ages 18 to 34 — a number that grows to 2.7 million when counting ages 0 to 34, the report found. The report also shows, for the first time, the race and ethnicity of the 69 percent of enrollees in the Federally-facilitated Marketplaces who voluntarily reported this information.
HHS also announced today that more than 4.8 million additional individuals enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP through the end of March 2014, compared to enrollment before the Marketplace opened last October.
“More than eight million Americans signed up through the Marketplace, exceeding expectations and demonstrating brisk demand for quality, affordable coverage,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “In addition, over 4.8 million more people have been covered by states through Medicaid and CHIP programs, around 3 million more Americans under 26 are covered under their parents’ plans, and recent estimates show that an additional 5 million people have purchased coverage outside of the Marketplace in Affordable Care Act-compliant plans. Together we are ensuring that health coverage is more accessible than ever before, which is important for families, for businesses and for the nation’s health and wellbeing.”
Let's see 8 million signed up through the marketplace, 4.8 million enrolled in Medicaid thanks to the Affordable Care Act expansion, and 5 million more have signed up for coverage with Obamacare compliant plans.
Yep that's 17.8 million alright.
So what do the Republicans do in the face of these staggering numbers?
Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!
What else?
Vibrant happy families! That's what President Obama is for!!
ReplyDeleteTake that, insignificant sarah!
Yea, Affordable Care Act, a great success and there isn't a damned thing the Republican idiots (U.S. Congress) can do about it.
ReplyDeleteFuck them and vote them out next election cycle! Dems and Independents get out the vote and nail their asses! They are a horrid party and don't support the poor, the middle class, women's rights and are trying to stop voting rights throughout the nation!
Sock it to them!!!!
Dr. Monica Wehby (R), pediatric neurosurgeon, is running here in Oregon to defeat incumbent Democrat Jeff Merkley. I just saw an ad for her this morning exclaiming how Obamacare is bad for Oregon and, by god, she's going to repeal it -- the only reason she's running. Of course, Romney and Gingrich have endorsed her. I hope she loses BIG time.
ReplyDeleteShe's had to walk back a bit while woffling.
DeleteHer views on Obamacare appear to have changed from a couple of months ago. During an interview with the Portland Business Journal in November, Wehby was specifically asked if she would repeal Obamacare if elected.
"That’s not politically viable at this point," Wehby answered. "We can’t get it repealed with Obama in office. We have to focus on coming together with solutions."
Needless to say, she has no solutions. I also hope she loses big time (and I know her).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/17/monica-wehby-obamacare_n_5169752.html
It sure hasn't stopped her from running the ad! Yeah, she has no solutions. None of them do.
DeleteHey, Gryph! Look what happened today at the "Meet The Republican Candidates" pow-wow with Willamette Week ( a local free weekly leftist-leaning newspaper). It's ALL over the news here! Climate change question, it was over! HAHAHAHA
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rSOZUu4JCk
I'm not sure that last 5 million really counts as obamacare, haven't seen it described that way elsewehere. But the more people who are insured now, who werent before -- however they get it -- the better. and that was in fact the whole point of the ACA.
ReplyDelete"5 million more have signed up for coverage with Obamacare compliant plans."
Delete"I'm not sure that last 5 million really counts as obamacare..."
----------------------------------------------
I think they do count as Obamacare, since they are compliant with the requirements of the ACA/Obamacare.
Without those requirements, would those plans be offered? Would the people who purchased them have been able to afford a plan without the ACA/Obamacare requirements regarding expenses as a percent of income, out-of-pocket expenses, and so on?
Well new people signed up for insurance before obamacare--people with new jobs out of school, for example, or those otherwise leaving their parents plans, or people who just decided they wanted it and could afford it. Maybe when they got married, or had a kid, or a health scare.
DeleteI dont' know how many that would have been in a given time frame before the ACA, but apparently there have been 5 million of them since Oct. Thye are not on obamacare, and not on medicaid expansion.
The ACA says that all plans have to be compliant (not a big deal, despite the GOP's screaming about it; most of the changes make the policies better for the insureds) but those people (unlike the first two groups) did not "get insured" BECAUSE OF Obamacare.
They would have gotten insurance anyway.
The pro ACA take on that group, I guess, is that the ACA did not stop them from getting insurance even if they didn't need to use the ACA. The GOP said ACA WOULD stop such people, but it did not.
If you are going to count every new insured person as a direct result of ACA (and not deduct for those that would have gotten insurance anyway), you might as well count the 3 million kids that stayed on thier parents' plan longer due to ACA:
Delete8 + 4.8 +3 +5 =20.8
But that's not an accurate measure of the impact of ACA; the primary point was to make health insurance available for people who could not get it otherwise. How many of those are there? 12.8 million, in 8 months, and despite the bungeld launch.
Pretty damn good.
"Thye are not on obamacare, and not on medicaid expansion. "
DeleteObamacare is not an insurance plan. A person is not "on" Obamacare as they would be, for example, on Blue Cross.
The ACA is a set of regulations covering many aspects of the insurance offered by private companies.
" those people (unlike the first two groups) did not "get insured" BECAUSE OF Obamacare.
They would have gotten insurance anyway."
No, many of them would not have gotten insurance anyway without the passage of the ACA/Obamacare. That is why the ACA was passed; to make it possible for people to be insured.
" primary point was to make health insurance available for people who could not get it otherwise. "
Well, yes, and that includes children who otherwise would have been kicked off their parents' plans, and who frequently do not have access to employer insurance and who could not possibly afford the individual plans offered prior to the passage of the ACA. For them, the solution provided by by the ACA was to include a provision allowing them to stay on their parents' plans.
Enrollments in Marketplace-based plans provide one group of people with insurance thanks to ACA/Obamacare. Medicaid expansion is another provision for another set of people. Non-Marketplace plans meeting compliance requirements provide insurance for another set of people. And the provision allowing children to stay on their parents' plans provides insurance for yet another subset of people.
All of these people can be considered when counting who has benefited from the ACA/Obamacare.
If the post was about "The Number of People Who Have Benefitted from Obamacare" you could argue its everybody -- 380 million or whatever. I benefit when I don't have to pay for some uninsured guy to go the ER.
DeleteBut the post is about: "Obamacare enrollment reaches 17.8 million."
Which is not accurate. Of the number in the article, only 12.8 are "insured when they would not otherwise be" due to "enrolling in Obamacare."
3 million tag along kids (not counted in G's total, btw) might have gone without or maybe gotten their own; some portion of those might be reasonably counted in "benefitted" but not in "enrolled in Obamacare."
5 million more are newly insured the old fashioned way. Would some or all them have gotten insurance witout ACA? Obviously. So while they too are "benefitted" by the new law, they cannot reasonably be counted among "Obamacare enrollees."
The point of the ACA, and the point of argument on both sides, is the number of newly insured that would not have been without it. That number is impressive, and the GOP is choking on it.
It is counterproductive to argue instead about the number of people who "beneffitted" and claiming that they are all Obamacare Enrolleees.
Fox News Ditches Obama Presser Because Reporters Not Asking About Benghazi (VIDEO)
ReplyDeleteFox News stopped airing President Barack Obama's joint press conference Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel because, the network said, reporters weren't asking him about Benghazi.
The topic has animated the conservative news network, and especially so Friday because Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) had just announced the House will vote to establish a select committee to investigate the Obama administration's response to the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate that left four Americans dead.
When cutting away from the news conference, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner was quite blunt about the fact that Benghazi was all Fox wanted to discuss at that moment.
"If in fact somebody throws him a question on this topic, we'll go back to that joint news conference with Angela Merkel and you could hear the translation points. We're going to move on here with what is breaking," Faulkner said.
The president wasn't asked about Benghazi, and the network didn't return to the joint press conference with the two U.S. and German leaders.
By contrast, MSNBC and CNN carried Obama's news conference from start to finish.
The president discussed Russia and Ukraine, U.S.-Germany relations, National Security Agency spying and the recent botched execution in Oklahoma.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/fox-news-obama-press-conference-benghazi
ReplyDeleteGOP BENGHAZI FREAKOUT!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/02/darrell-issa-john-kerry-benghazi_n_5253825.html
Obamacare Truthers Get Caught in a Lie on Delinquency Rate
ReplyDeleteFirst, the Obamacare Truthers—the Republicans and conservatives who insist that every piece of remotely positive news about the health-care law’s impact has to be a filthy lie—lost the battle of the enrollment figures. The issue here isn’t whether the Obama administration is telling the complete truth when it says 8 million. The issue is that the Truthers predicted 3 million, 2 million, 1 million, 0 million, a death spiral. And whether the administration is gilding the lily and the real number is 8 or 7.7 or 7.4 million, the hard fact is the Truthers were just crazy wrong.
Having lost that battle, they’ve now opened fire on a second front. Maybe the enrollment numbers are wrong, maybe they’re right, the Truthers say, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is the percentage of people who actually pay their premiums.
There is some truth (as opposed to Truth) to this. People can sign up with every intention of paying and then get hit with something—an unexpected car-repair bill—and they can’t pay. Or more likely, they’re young and healthy, and they decide “What was I thinking, I got all caught up in Zach Galifianakis fever?”—and they don’t pay. And if the young and healthy (who cost the insurance companies nothing) don’t pay, then the only people in the system are the old and sick, who cost the insurance companies a lot, and premiums skyrocket.
So in some ways the “percentage paying” number is even more important than the raw enrollment number. It is, after all, the real enrollment number, the number of people actually getting and keeping health coverage. And so the second the Truthers lost the enrollment fight, they moved to the percentage battle. This will prove that Obamacare can’t work.
On Wednesday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee put out a report looking at enrollment (“report” is overdoing it; it’s one page). It was methodologically pretty simple. They collected data from every insurer participating in what’s called the Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) and looked at who’d signed up for coverage and who’d paid a first premium by April 15. The House panel’s answer was 67 percent.
Now, 67 percent doesn’t sound half bad to me, but the GOP spun it as yet another Obamacare disaster—it would push the “real enrollment” number down near 5 million and mean that one in three people who’d signed up for health-care coverage was already delinquent. They didn’t quite say that, but it was obviously the whole point of the report. “Tired of receiving incomplete pictures of enrollment in the health-care law, we went right to the source and found that the administration’s recent declarations of success may be unfounded,” said committee chairman Fred Upton of Michigan.
The committee got what it wanted: Headlines saying only 67 percent of ACA enrollees were paying. I’m sure there was ample coverage on Fox News, and it blasted out across the talk-radio waves. They have a talking point now, and a number, and it’s low enough that they can spin it as a lousy number.
The only problem is, it’s a wrong number.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/02/obamacare-truthers-get-caught-in-a-lie-on-delinquency-rate.html
OMG. Have you seen this Gryphen?
ReplyDeleteWaseca teen accused in school shooting plot had been planning for months
...LaDue was in the unit when officers arrived. Several small lanterns were set up inside to provide light, and officers saw ammo boxes, a scale, a pressure cooker and packaging for red iron oxide, materials commonly used for making bombs.
...LaDue said he had an SKS assault rifle with 400 rounds of ammunition, a 9mm handgun with ammo and a gun safe with more firearms, all in his bedroom at home. He gave an officer the key to the gun safe and the key to his guitar case, where he said they’d find his notebook.
He told police that he planned to kill his parents and sister with a .22-caliber rifle because it would make less noise than some of his other firearms.
Then, he said, he planned to go to the surrounding countryside and start a fire. While police and firefighters were busy, he would go back to the school with bombs, firearms and ammunition. He planned to set off pressure cooker bombs in recycling boxes near the water fountains in the cafeteria and would shoot school liaison officer Jared Chrz “so that he did not stop him from his plans for killing more students,” the document said.
...Seven firearms and three completed bombs were found in LaDue’s bedroom, the complaint said. Another three bombs, along with chemicals and other materials, were found in the storage unit. LaDue also had 60 pounds of metal ball bearings.
In a second interview with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, LaDue talked about his notebook. In his first journal entry on July 24, 2013, LaDue listed a detailed plan for killing his family, Chrz and students. Over the nine months covered in the notebook, he never changed those plans.
http://www.startribune.com/local/257505631.html?page=all&prepage=1&c=y#continue
I saw this earlier in the news, some woman saw him cutting through her property, trying too hard to act like he wasn't up to something and she tipped the authorities. They interviewed a former FBI profiler who read portions of the notebook and he said it's one of the worst cases he's encountered after 30 years, but couldn't go into detail.
DeleteOff topic but I've been wondering, Gryphen-what happened to Why I Fight? I bookmarked the blog on your recommendation and it went silent Feb. 7. I keep checking it because it seems like he would have some interesting things to say on recent current events. Will he ever be back? Thanks-
ReplyDeleteLMFAO!
ReplyDeleteTed Cruz: "Ur, if you vote for me, I'll, uh, take away your, uh, health care."
Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi! has been debunked, never gained traction, and is more embarrassing than Obamacare! Obamacare! Obamacare!
All they got left is Monica! Monica! Monica!
Hillary: LOL!
Hopefully the ACA will help turn around these appalling statistics
ReplyDeleteMore than 18 mothers died for every 100,000 live births in the US in 2013, which is more than double the rates in Saudi Arabia and Canada, and more than triple that in the UK. The biggest increase occurred in women aged 20-24: While only 7.2 women died for every 100,000 births in 1990, that age group saw a mortality rate of 14 per 100,000 in 2013. Now the US is ranked at 60 out of 180 countries in the measures of maternal death (where a lower number indicates fewer deaths).
http://qz.com/205607/childbirth-death-is-way-more-likely-in-the-us-than-the-uk-and-its-getting-worse/#/h/65919,1/
btw, a good example of how small towns work is, when people spread rumors, it always gets back to them. I just found out that the kids who lied about Willow in the past have basically been tossed to the birds socially. And I know for a fact that the kids who bullied Bristol at school in Juneau were told off by people who stood up for her.
ReplyDeleteNot that shit that happened 7 years ago (or 4 years) matters.
It was the same with the Wasilla High student from the 80s who is famous for talking shit and lying about life then and about Sarah. Egypt resident. She was thrown to the birds also. Fact.
Good God, will you please shut up.
DeleteWhat The F*** are you talking about?
DeleteThis is gibberish.
Fact.
Run along kid.
Delete"Not that shit that happened 7 years ago (or 4 years) matters. "
DeleteAnd yet you blather on. You should get a life and vibrate.
The Crazy resident Troll has STOLEN another name. What's wrong Troll are you ashamed of your real name? Bristol and Willow weren't in High School in Juneau long enough to make friends. 9 month Mono forced them to Drop Out!
DeleteThe crazy resident troll doesn't realize that the more it posts, the less credence it has. We aren't that stupid, troll. You just continue to prove the utter idiocy of $arah's fan base.
DeleteJust in time. Contagion:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theverge.com/2014/5/2/5675886/deadly-respiratory-disease-mers-hits-us-for-the-first-time
Add the best jobs report in five years - gee, who's been in office for the last five years? Yep, our POTUS and his 3 d chess game. But there'll always be Benghazi, Darryl Issa and Fox tripping on their shoelaces changing their script on the fly because they can't handle the truth.
ReplyDelete