Dr. Scott Gottlieb has done yeoman’s work, trying to figure out just how many people are newly insured under the totally settled law of the land.
The answer?
Unanswered in all this is also the question of how many employers might have offered insurance for the first time, or expanded their coverage, but for Obamacare and the ability to move their workers onto the exchanges. In an expanding economy, the total share of employer-sponsored coverage should have similarly grown, if historical trends are any guide. Yet the number of people insured through work was flat by many other estimates, and according to the Goldman analysis, actually declined. This strongly suggests the ACA is displacing private coverage.
It could be that most of what Obamacare does to address the “uninsured” problem is obligate a whole lot more people to Medicaid, a program that already suffers from severe access problems owing to years of underfunding relative to its expanding mission, and the chronic health needs of its mostly indigent population. Obamacare only adds to the program’s strains. At the same time, on the commercial side, Obamacare may be mostly creating churn — by displacing people from their employer-sponsored coverage and moving them onto the exchanges.
It’s hard to know for certain, since the current figures – at least those released by Washington – can’t be compared to historical trends. The Census Bureau made a significant change in how it estimates the number of people who lack insurance, starting with its assessment for 2013. That means that after 2013, the results can’t be compared to those for prior years. The government’s new method conveniently results in a lower estimate of the total number of people without insurance.
It’s almost as if the Obama Administration doesn’t want us to know the facts about the President’s signature domestic policy achievement.
UPDATE: Fine, fine — some might say that expanding coverage is a paramount moral good, so it doesn’t matter how few actually get the benefit or how much it costs.
Well:
Even as premiums might be about to go up, a study published Thursday by the consumer healthcare nonprofit group Families USA showed that one out of four adults who bought health insurance through exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act skipped necessary medical treatment because the care was too expensive. These adults had paid monthly premiums, some of them subsidized by the government, for health insurance but were nevertheless unable to afford the very care it was supposed to provide.
Forced to pay for coverage they can’t afford to use — how’s that for a paramount moral good?
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