The Verdict Is In?
Politico‘s headline was unambiguous ― “The verdict is in: Obamacare lowers uninsured.”
Well, my goodness, I would certainly hope so after spending several hundred billions of dollars to do just that. We can’t be sure how much has been spent so far, but the legislation called for over $1,000 billion over ten years. Let’s see ― it has been in effect for four years now, so is that $400 billion so far?
The Politico article reports that the Commonwealth Fund estimates 9.5 million fewer uninsured, and the Urban Institute finds 8 million newly insured adults. Let’s round it up to ten million. That would make $40,000 for each newly insured person. Wow!
Of course, there are some problems with even these optimistic numbers. Chris Conover delves deeply into the methodology in Forbes. But I want to add a few other observations –
- It is curious that Commonwealth takes as its baseline July-September, 2013 and compares that date to April-June, 2014, when Gallup reports a remarkable spike in the numbers of uninsured at just that time. Now Conover questions the reliability of the Gallup poll, but there isn’t much doubt that many people were dropped from coverage throughout 2013 in anticipation of the Obamacare open enrollment starting in October of that year. So mid-2013 is an outlier in the rate of the uninsured. It would be more accurate and certainly more informative to compare the numbers of uninsured today to the numbers when Obamacare was enacted (March, 2010) or even better to before the start of the recession.
- Some large numbers of the people who think they are covered are not. The Washington Post reported on this a couple of months ago. Many of the people who are enrolled have not verified their eligibility, but the government currently has no ability to confirm their status, one way or the other.
- The Administration has delayed many of the provisions that will reduce the numbers of covered people. These include the scheduled cancellation of individual policies in about half the states and the imposition of the employer mandate and the “minimum benefits” requirement on employers. These delays have been so arbitrary and capricious that no one knows what is expected of them and when these expectations will be enforced, so they just keep doing what they have always done until they are told they no longer can.
- Some of the newly insured would have gotten covered even without Obamacare as the economy continues its painfully slow recovery and more people get jobs.
So it is hard to take much comfort from the conclusion that some people have gained coverage after all this time and money. Wake me up when the numbers of uninsured get down to 5% of the population.
It sort of makes sense that if you lower the cost of coverage for many people the rate of people with coverage should go up.
“Some large numbers of the people who think they are covered are not. The Washington Post reported on this a couple of months ago. Many of the people who are enrolled have not verified their eligibility, but the government currently has no ability to confirm their status, one way or the other.”
The verdict is really not in if people are being misrepresented as being insured. And if the government has no way to ensure their insured, then I am assured there are many individuals tallied as insured that will have a rude awakening.
“Wake me up when the numbers of uninsured get down to 5% of the population.”
You will be asleep for a long time my friend.
We can probably get the uninsured rate down that long, but that doesn’t mean there will be doctors there to provide care. Insurance is not a guarantee to health care.
“Let’s round it up to ten million. That would make $40,000 for each newly insured person.”
It is nice to see that the cost of insuring each previously uninsured person cost nearly the annual median income level to do so. Great job ObamaCare!
That’s true, and, let’s remember, it’s also the LAW that we have to buy or otherwise obtain this product (health insurance) regardless of whether we want it or not. This post does a great job pointing out some aspects of the CommonWealth Fund’s study that make the results far from conclusive. The best point has to do with the base time period from which ConnomWealth bases their “decrease” in the number of uninsured.
Plus we also need to look at the bigger picture here. The number of people covered doesn’t necessarily correlated with the quality of care. In fact, Obamacare will almost certainly lead to poorer care as more and more services will need to be rationed as the supply is unable to meet the demand increases.
INSURED MAYBE, BUT DOES THAT ASSURE ACCESS?
Of course not. Like I have always said, it is noble to try to give everyone health insurance, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have access to health care.
Another negative aspect of this post would also have to be all the economic consequences of the ACA. While it has cost nearly $40,000 per each newly insured person, Obamacare is also doing a terrible number on the employment situation in our country in the form of a shrinking employed-population ratio, increasing numbers of part-time work, and stunted economic growth.
It is a tad slippery to say that the ACA has cost $400 billion so far.
a. The darn thing was always back loaded
b. Virtually no parts of the ACA have been activated for 4 full years as we speak.
c. Most of the $100 billion a year was in subsidies and expanded Medicaid.
Medicaid expansion is not that hard to track. Greg, to be thorough you should have done so. The average cost for a young person joining Medicaid was estimated by Harold Pollack at $1,000 a year.
I agree that it is hard to be sure how many of the non-Medicaid enrollees will keep their coverage for one year, and how much they will cost in subsidies.
My very rough impression is that about 5 million persons are now in the ACA and getting subsidies.
I do not know what the average subsidy comes to. I would make a rough guess of $3000 for a single person.
Anyways, the $40,000 per person number is misleading.
Bob,
Of course it is misleading, but since the Administration continues to hide the numbers what else can we do but speculate? Keep in mind also that the start-up costs are all front-loaded.