Posted on 02/17/2017 4:06:09 AM PST by IBD editorial writer
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control shows that the uninsured rate has hit a historic low, or at least it's the lowest it's been in the 20 years the CDC has been tracking it.
This is being treated as trouble for Republicans who want to repeal ObamaCare, since it seems to indicate that the law is working as promised. But does it?
According to the report, the overall uninsured rate was 8.8% in the first nine months of 2016. That's down from 9.1% the year before, and 16% in 2010, the year President Obama signed ObamaCare — also know as the Affordable Care Act — into law. What's more, the biggest one-year drop occurred in 2014, which is the year that ObamaCare's exchanges opened and the Medicaid expansion went into effect.
The CDC says this means that 20 million people gained coverage since 2010.
Andy Slavitt, who was acting administrator under Obama for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told CNBC that "the continued reduction in the uninsured rate is more historic good news from the ACA — measured in the quality of people's lives."
But the CDC report is far less encouraging about ObamaCare than it seems.
For one thing, the 8.8% uninsured rate includes everyone, including those on Medicare. With the massive baby boom generation starting to retire, the number of uninsured will go down automatically as they go on that program. Those gains in coverage have nothing to do with ObamaCare.
What about those under age 65?
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that they went on Medicaid.
Correct!
With $5000 a year in premiums and a $10,000 deductible, you are still effectively uninsured
Just sounds like more socialism to me.
Imagine that, make it a law that folks have to have insurance and the uninsured numbers drop...
Expensively effectively uninsured.
No, just a taxpayer. Especially in NYS. Medicaid cost sharing is bankrupting some of our counties.
This is a ridiculous article that comes to ridiculous conclusions based on the false presumption that more people listed as insured means that Obamacare is working. NO it just means that more victims have succumbed to the jack booted extortionist that forced them to pay double or triple the price for a service that is worthless.
Trivial Fake News
Well, you are insured against catastrophe, but you are unlikely to get the normal medical care that might help you prevent catastrophe because it's so expensive (i.e., in addition to the premiums) that you'll put up with a lot to avoid any additional expense.
Used to be that a $10,000 deductible plan would cost an entire family about $2100 a year.
The uninsured are uninsured until they walk into the Hospital. To get paid, the Hospital signs them up for Medicais, Kidcare or whatever the Hospital thinks will be best for the Hospital.
For many uninsured in the middle class, they wait with signing up until they get diagnosed with cancer (or whatever). Then, because pre-existing conditions cannot be excluded, they sign up.
If you are working poor (or middle class with expensive tastes) and you have a choice between paying for food and paying for healthcare, which would you buy first?
Many of those uninsured are also too proud to go on food stamps and other welfare programs. The Hospital convinces them to drop their pride so the Hospital can get paid.
Democrats, once again, solving poverty by making it illegal.
My wife and I, both 63, don’t have health insurance for several reasons. First and foremost, Jesus is our physician. By His stripes we are healed. We pray every single day for his protection.
Second, the deductible is so high that it only covers very expensive procedures. And these procedures are ones we would probably opt out of even if we needed them. If either of us were to get cancer, we’d go naturopathic. Everything from the Gerson method to Hemp oil to B17, you name it.
My daughter in law has crones disease. She self manages it and has for years using Hemp oil and other natural means. Meanwhile, a friend has an 18 year old daughter with the same disease. She uses conventional AMA approved medicine.
She has gotten progressively worse as they remove her anus and various other body parts (and all that that implies). She is regularly hospitalized and on constant sedative pain medications with only very rare periods of lucidity. It is a horror I would not wish on anyone.
For us, medical insurance covers stuff we don’t even want. And for the minor stuff, the internet and google has made MD’s almost obsolete.
Remember Sen Nelson from Nebraska? Tried to broker a deal solely for his state (IIRC) that severely lessened that PPACA-Medicaid bite for each state’s cost-sharing with the Federal Government.
It was KNOWN back in 2009 that the uninsured would be shifted to Medicaid, and half of that cost would be carried by the individual states.
When I first retires we paid $1700 for a $5000 deductible policy. Last year 0-care was $26k for $12k deductible.
You bet it was known. NY pols knew it, too. And didn’t give a damn.
Pray you don’t have a heart attack.
I had one about three years ago. Only needed a stent but the bills came to about $40K.
You are right. Before I went on Medicare, I was paying over $14,000 a year for my coverage, with a $10,000 deductible. That was for ONE person here in SC.
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