President Trump keeps telling us Obamacare is a disaster. Paul Krugman and Ezekiel Emanuel keep telling us it is a success.
The Obama administration told us that 20 million new people have obtained healthcare insurance because of Obamacare.
We know 14.5 million people lost their healthcare insurance in the individual market the year after Obamacare was passed.
Many assumed they got their insurance back through Obamacare. There is no evidence for that assumption.
I followed Obamacare enrollment carefully on acasignup.net.
This site was supposed to be publishing the exact numbers published by the government weekly. www.acasignups.net
It turns out that the numbers published were inaccurate. They were too high.
“Since the release of the HHS study, the government has published two additional surveys of health-insurance coverage – the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the American Community Survey (ACS). Both offer data through the end of 2015, allowing for comparison with the NHIS estimate.”
The government now claims these studies are only estimates of nonelderly adults, under the age of 65, who gained insurance coverage.
Where did the number 20 million new lives covered come from? Bill Clinton boosted the number to 25 million when campaigning for Hilary Clinton.
Edmund F. Haislmaier and Drew Gonshorowski of the Heritage foundation examined data from insurance company regulatory filings and from the government’s own headcount of Medicaid enrollment.
“Their study found that 14 million people (including children) gained public or private coverage in 2014 and 2015.”
This total is even lower because it includes S-Chip coverage for children.
This means only 2,240,000 people signed up in President Obama’s Health Insurance Exchanges.
It also means that there were 11,760,000 new Medicaid or S-Chip patients.
Edmund F. Haislmaier concluded in testimony to congress;
“While the final figures will be somewhat different once the more complete end of year data is available, at this point it is reasonable to expect that
for the three year period 2014 through 2016, the net increase in health insurance enrollment was 16.5 million individuals. Of that figure, 13.8 million were added to Medicaid and 2.7 million were the net increase in private sector coverage enrollment.”
http://budget.house.gov/uploadedfiles/house_budget_testimony-haislmaier.pdf
Eighty-five percent of the 2.7 million have pre-existing conditions. Most are receiving government subsidies.
The 2.7 million covered under Obamacare have destabilized the healthcare insurance market so that healthcare costs for businesses have become unaffordable.
No one has even mentioned the cost of this Obamacare folly to the average hard working taxpayers with healthcare coverage from their employers.
Obamacare’s failure to has been devastating.
“The authors also found that nearly half the new Medicaid enrollees met eligibility standards that were in place before the ACA.”
Maybe Jonathan Gruber is right when he said we, the public, are too stupid to know the wool is being pulled over their eyes.
“For all the hoopla about the ACA exchanges, it appears that Medicaid accounts for the lion’s share of coverage gains and that many new Medicaid enrollees would have been eligible for that program even if the ACA had never passed.”
Medicaid is a single party payer system (socialized medicine) that works very poorly. It is almost as bad as the VA Healthcare System.
Is this what the public wants? No
America needs a better healthcare system. Hopefully Dr. Tom Price knows what to do replace Obamacare with once he dismantles all of the Obama administrations regulation.
Maybe Jonathan Gruber is wrong.
The general taxpayer may be smarter than Dr. Gruber thinks. Maybe it is the reason the public elected Donald Trump.
The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” is, mine and mine alone.
All Rights Reserved © 2006 – 2017 “Repairing The Healthcare System” Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE
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