Obamacare's Enrollment Numbers Mask a Grim Reality

President Bill Clinton famously predicted that "Obamacare" would start getting popular the day after it was signed into law.

radio.fox.com

But even though the program reached its seven million-enrollment target yesterday, Americans are not celebrating. In fact, support for the program is at an all-time low.

But I explain in a piece on Al Jazeera's opinion pages that this might be because Americans' experience with the program is not comporting with the administration's hype. The seven million figure sounds impressive, but many of the folks included in it are insurance refugees whose coverage Obamacare abolished, not the previously uninsured. These folks are being forced to buy plans that cost more for benefits they don't want — while denying them the benefits they need.

"Obamacare promised to cut the ranks of the uninsured and offer those already covered a better deal while bending the cost curve, but such rosy predictionsare not panning out," I note.

Go here to read the whole thing.

Comments

[Palin's Buttplug]

More fear.

[The Last American Hero]

Lots of Dems running on "Obamacare: I told you it would work" this election season?

[GILMORE]

Rather than play the simpering passive-aggressive smug twat, why don't you provide some actual data that shows any claims here are false?

Like, for instance, that fact the majority of coverage under the ACA costs *more* than that people had previously - for both individual insurance as well as employer-sponsored coverage. And these increases come with no demonstrable improvement in coverage or access to care.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ma.....the-young/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/th.....insurance/

Please don't bother pointing me to bullshit #a on how the ACA has something to do with "Lower increases in spending!" than in previous years, data which are easily funged by cuts to Medicare price increases and other jury-rigged federal data.

[GILMORE]

Apparently Al-Jazeera readers are also deathly terrified of the Koch brothers.

[Terc]

I saw that too! I came back here from that comment section to be cleansed.

[Juice]

Well, the comments of the actual article told me all I need to know about how this "debate" will go. Thanks a fucking lot Koch bros. for making those fucking commercials. Now any criticism of Obamacare is easily dismissed as "Koch funded."

[Swiss Servator, mehr Spr?ngli]

If it wasn't KOCHTOPUS, it would be TEATHUGLICAN OBSTRUCTIONISZMZ! or something else - see above for the true believer absolute dedication.

[Sudden]

Why argue the impacts of the policy and the merits of its passage when its so much easier to simply froth at the mouth and attack the name of a single financier who opposed the legislation?

That there are people that are so feeble minded as to resort to ignoratio elenchi is unsurprising.