The Affordable Care Act....Check & Mate

Great! Now we know what some blogger thinks.

 

Fixed that.

 

Now you are back to attacking the messenger and changing the topic. Despite your antics, the question remains;

It was your post! Answer it! How many new signees are there?​

 

From "Doomed" To Boom: How The Press Missed The Obamacare Comeback Story

3 hours and 5 minutes ago ››› ERIC BOEHLERT



Just three weeks ago the Associated Press reported the Obama administration needed "something close to a miracle" in order to "meet its goal" of enrolling six million people into private health care plans via the Affordable Care Act before the looming April 1 deadline arrived.
The article's premise was telling in that it focused on what the political fallout would be if Obamacare sign-ups fell short. Noticeably absent was any analysis of what an Obamacare deadline success would look like or what the political implications would be. The scenario of success simply wasn't considered plausible or worth addressing.
Of course, we now know that as many as seven million people enrolled for private coverage through the exchanges established by Obama's health care law. Thanks to an amazing consumer surge in the month of March, the seven million mark, routinely thought of last year as completely unattainable, and often dismissed this year as not possible, was met.
And because of a provision of the Obamacare law, approximately three million young people have been added to their parents' private insurance plans. Meaning, more than 10 million people have used Obamacare to secure health coverage. The new law, noted the Los Angeles Times, "has spurred the largest expansion in health coverage in America in half a century." The paper reported, "At least 9.5 million previously uninsured people have gotten health insurance since Obamacare started."
Take a look at this revealing chart from CNNMoney.com and what the future of health care coverage under Obamacare might look like:

Given all of that, where's the heated coverage of the miraculous Obamacare comeback? Aside from the Times and CNNMoney pieces, I'm hard pressed to find many recent media examples that laud the health care achievement with the same unrestrained vigor that the press employed for weeks and months depicting Obamacare as an historic failure and one that could ruin Obama's presidency, and perhaps even the Democratic Party. (Remember, Obamacare "may be Obama's Katrina, Iraq War.")
Is Obamacare now a model of government efficiency? It is not. The initial rollout, without qualification, was a failure. And lots of major hurdles still loom. But the remarkable success of the enrollment figures has clearly failed to produce the type of media response that Obamacare's remarkable failure ignited last year.
So the larger media coverage question is, has the press been wed for so long to the Republican-friendly narrative of a broken and doomed Obamacare system that journalists are refusing to adjust the storyline as crucial new facts emerge?
Some newsrooms seem to be in denial as they strain to still portray Obamacare enrollment as a failure. Today's doom-and-gloom Wall Street Journal headline: "New Technical Woes Hobble Health Sign-Ups at Zero Hour." It wasn't until the seventh paragraph that the Journal even mentioned that Obamacare had defied the odds and reached the seven million mark. The Washington Post's front page headline likewise reads "HealthCare.gov hiccups amid deadline-day frenzy."
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman noted the "de facto blackout by major news media" on the unfolding story of the skyrocketing enrollment figures. Krugman sees the press' largely ho-hum enrollment coverage as part of a larger media treatment of Obamacare: "The website woes were, and deserved to be, a big story; the quite amazing comeback somehow doesn't fit the preferred narrative, and is being ignored." (Just yesterday, CNN questioned whether the White House "spin" about Obamacare enrollment numbers would "stick.")
The sign-up success only represents part of the increasingly positive story surrounding Obamacare, its implementation and how it's perceived:

• The percentage of uninsured Americans is down to 15.9 percent, according to Gallup.
• Health care costs in the United States as a share of the Gross Domestic Product dropped for the first time since 1997.
• "The number of uninsured is expected to decrease by about 16 million after implementation of the ACA," according to a study by CUNY and Harvard Medical School researchers.

 

cont'ed

For months though, bad news rained down on the Obamacare beat. That was aided, of course, by "a sustained assault against Obamacare mounted with the help of the donor network organized by Charles and David Koch and the array of social-welfare groups it funds," as National Review approvingly reportedthis week.
With their usual party discipline, conservative voices were unified in their predictions:
"Obamacare is Doomed To Failure, And The Sooner That Happens The Sooner We Can Fix It" [Daily Caller]
"ObamaCare Is Doomed Without The Youth" [TownHall]
"ObamaCare Is Doomed" [The Other McCain]
"Why Obamacare Was Doomed To Fail From The Outset" [Fiscal Times]
What's revealing is just how certain conservatives were that Obamacare would fail, as they mocked Democrats for not acknowledging that fact.
From National Review Online's Jim Geraghty [emphasis added]:

A key part of Democrats' discussions since October has been, "it's going to be fine, it's going to be fine, just be patient, just wait." The house is burning down, and some people inside are insisting that the fire will burn out by itself.​

And from PJ Media:

It bears repeating that the real crisis isn't whether the feds are able to get the website up and running "on time." The real crisis is when the rush of customers -- the young, healthy ones required to make the law function -- fail to materialize in December. Or January, February, or March.​

But it wasn't just far-right media voices that were eager to cement the "doomed" narrative. Columnists like Bloomberg's Megan McArdle spent more than half a year trying to bury Obamacare with columns like "Is Obamacare in a Death Spiral?" "Why Obamacare Is Like Three Mile Island," "Resolved: Obamacare Is Now Beyond Rescue," "Young Invincibles Are Killing Obamacare," and just four days ago, "Is Obamacare Now Beyond Repeal?"
That last one was quite remarkable: Nobody who's been even remotely connected to Beltway politics for the last six months (twelve months?) has believed there was any chance of Obamacare being repealed. But last week, as Obamacare enrollment numbers soared, McArdle was still raising the possibility that Congress might wipe Obamacare off the books?
It's hard to cover a topic any closer than McCardle's covered health care reform, and yet still manage to miss the story. For the rest of the press, this week could mark a turning point for Obamacare. The coverage ought to reflect that.

 

WOW!! A blogger for Media Matters? His blog is almost as credible as the word of our Liar-in-Chief or your "Sebelius says" post.

 

Great! Now we know what some other blogger thinks.

 

You don't think very highly of yourself, do you?

 

Check & Mate bitches....

Obamacare Enrollment Hits 7.1 Million On Final Day

WASHINGTON -- After a rollout so shaky that many wondered if the Affordable Care Act would be able to stand, more than 7 million people have chosen health plans through the insurance exchanges created under the law, the White House said on Tuesday.

"Last night, the first open enrollment period under this law came to an end," President Barack Obama said. "And despite several lost weeks out of the gate, several lost because of problems with the website, 7.1 million Americans have now signed up for private insurance plans through these marketplaces. 7.1."

"In these first six months, we've taken a big step forward, and just as importantly, this law is bringing greater security to Americans who already have coverage," he added.

The president also hit back at critics of the law, saying the problems they predicted haven't come to pass.

"There are still no death panels, Armageddon has not arrived," he said. "The debate over repealing this law is over. The Affordable Care Act is here to stay."

The release of the latest enrollment figure represents a high-water mark for the legislation, which stumbled dramatically out of the gate amid technical problems plaguing the insurance exchange website. The total of 7.1 million people is slightly higher than the Congressional Budget Office's initial estimate that 7 million would sign up during the six-month open enrollment period.

And the news seems likely to only get better. According to White House officials, the number does not include individuals who enrolled on March 31 through state exchanges -- a group that likely numbers tens of thousands of people, if not more. It also does not count those who attempted to purchase health coverage but encountered technical difficulties and could not finish the process by the enrollment deadline. The administration has established what is essentially an honor system for people to declare that they began their applications and were unable to finish them, so that number may ultimately be high as well.

"Today we can say definitively that at midnight last night, I think it's fair to say we passed everyone's expectations," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said during Tuesday's briefing.

The 7.1 million figure does not include the millions who have signed up for coverage through the law's Medicaid expansion, which remains accessible after the end of open enrollment to those who qualify.

Congressional Republicans weren't impressed by the number. "We don’t know of course, exactly what they have signed up for, we don’t know how many have paid. What we do know is that all across the country our constituents are having an unpleasant interaction with Obamacare," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement. "Whether they can sign up for a policy or not, they are discovering, of course, higher premiums, a higher deductible. Many of them are losing their jobs and so it is really is a tragedy for the country both for the healthcare providers and the consumers."

McConnell's concerns aside, questions remain about the law's viability. The number of people who have paid their first month's premium, for one thing, is unknown, though Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius predicted that roughly 85 percent of those who have chosen a plan have also paid their first month's bill.

Another question involves the demographic breakdown of those who purchased coverage. Insurance companies are hoping that as many healthy or young individuals as possible will participate in the exchanges, but early data suggested that those people were largely holding off on purchasing plans. However, insurers have reported that younger individuals began signing up in the later months, including purchasing off-exchange plans. And on Tuesday, Carney expressed optimism about the composition of the current pool.

"We already know that that breakdown is sufficient to ensure that the marketplaces will effectively function," he said.

For several months, it was not entirely clear whether the White House would be able to make such triumphant declarations. The launch of HealthCare.gov on Oct. 1 was an unmitigated disaster, with only a handful of people even able to make it through the website to purchase an insurance policy. It would take weeks to figure out the full extent of the technical problems that the administration was facing after which the president was left with the choice of delaying the law for a period of time or forging ahead with the same 6-month enrollment period. When tech experts brought in to help repair the system said it could be salvaged, the administration decided on the latter.

Enrollment lagged badly in October and November but picked up in December. January's numbers, which beat initial expectations, suggested that the website had fully overcome its early glitches and that the law could be implemented successfully. But a setback in February gave critics ammunition to argue that the White House would not meet even diminished expectations. An Associated Press article dated March 11 said, "the White House needs something close to a miracle to meet its goal of enrolling 6 million people by the end of this month."

They got to 7 million, and without divine intervention.

Instead, the administration and allied outside groups pursued a strategy that combined a thorough social media campaign with targeted efforts to reached the uninsured. Rather than blanketing the airwaves with advertisements promoting the Affordable Care Act, they went after specific communities, even neighborhoods. The mantra, officials says, was, "reach them where they are."

No stone was left unturned. According to senior administration officials, during the final six weeks of enrollment, more than 5,000 events were organized by the Department of Health and Human Services and outside groups such as Planned Parenthood, SEIU, and Enroll America. This type of "low-tech" effort, as administration officials described it, was critical in giving skeptics the information they needed to ultimately decide to enroll. Proponents of the law needed to find consumers more than the consumers had to find them, administration officials said.

As an added component, the administration tried to leverage a campaign on traditional and social media to reach the traditionally unengaged. During the last six weeks, White House officials and celebrity surrogates did over 300 radio interviews. The president, first lady and vice president alone did 20. Meanwhile, celebrities enlisted by the White House to tweet out the health care website and a petition to get coverage reached nearly 350 million Twitter users, according to data from administration officials. The tweets themselves were retweeted more than 40,000 times.

The president's appearance on "Between Two Ferns," a parody interview show on the website Funny or Die, was highlighted as an event that helped move the conversation around Obamacare beyond the traditional political confines. But it was the assistance of the Miami Heat's LeBron James that may have had the most impact. One senior administration official said that James' public service announcement, which was aired as a commercial, paved the way for other athletes and celebrities to pitch Obamacare as well.

By targeting the outreach to areas with particularly high levels of uninsured people, the administration was able to optimize results. According to senior officials, from Feb. 1 to March 1, enrollment in the top 20 cities the administration was targeting grew by about 41 percent. Nationwide, it grew by 29 percent over that same period.

 

Oh, don't attack the messenger.

 

Maybe some of the lingo I use is off but when i said premiums I meant the amount that we had to pay every month and it was a rep from aca that suggested if we underestimate our income than what we have to pay each month would be less.

 

All I know is that my employees and my family aren't happy with the insurance coverage difference before aca and now.

 

Well, according to Harry Reid & moron joe, if you claim your insurance coverage is worse under Obamacare or it costs you more you are a liar.
What say you moron joe?

 

I dont care if he thinks I'm lying and I dont care to drug into your little dispute. I'm here to tell everybody that if they think aca is good for everybody they are dead wrong. I saw that they were celebrating the 7 million enrollmenst but I would ask if this law was so good and there are 20 million people unisured why is the goal only 7 million and why are they threatened with penaltys for not signing up? Being the owner of 2 businesses I would be ready to jump off a bridge if I had undertaken such a project and could only get a third of the market interested. Someone told me today that every person in the country could have be given $1 million dollars each for what has been spent on aca before a single person was covered.

 

These are some very good points. I agree with all of them, but I'm anti-Obamacare anyway for these and other reasons. Let's see if anyone here who is pro-Obamacare can address your issues.

 

Russo, I don't think you're a liar. Somewhat confused sure but there are many confusing aspects of this law. Heck, there is an entire political party dedicated to making it as confusing as possible for people like you. The law was designed to do many things over time. Some things were immediate like keeping insurers from kicking people off their coverage for getting sick and other aspects were designed to bring down rising premium rates over time. Even Obama admitted over and over that there would be tweaks and changes as time went on but this law sets the framework for a better system of delivering health coverage than we have ever had. Even since it's brief inception, uninsured rates have already dropped. When was the last time that happened in this country?

Do you know what the next step is going to be? Single payer. I can't wait to watch the Right's head explode over that fight. At least we will know that they have medical coverage when that happens.

 

Yes, I understood that in your post from the beginning but many people do not understand that the ACA insurance subsidy is actually an advanced tax credit. Under estimating income for the purpose of receiving a larger subsidy amounts to nothing but a premium payment deferral. I am not sure what type of penalties and interest one might face for employing such a tactic. From what I have read as many as 40% of those receiving a subsidy will find out come next year when filing their taxes.

As for the ACA representative advising employing the tactic of under estimating income for the purpose of receiving a larger subsidy - I can only hope this is an isolated case and not a generally accepted industry wide practice.

 

I wondered what he meant by "ACA representative"? Specifically?

 

Working from memory - I believe the ACA contained a provision that allowed the creation of some type of Certified Enrollment Specialist. Many states, mostly red ones, adopted legislation which prevented recognition of this certified professional designation and/or reduced the scope of services they could provide.

 

I was wondering if RUSSO was talking about an insurance agent/provider? They haven't been the most honest brokers in this process.