[Gaffer]

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that they went on Medicaid.

[scope721]

With $5000 a year in premiums and a $10,000 deductible, you are still effectively uninsured

[grobdriver]

and the Medicaid expansion went into effect.

Just sounds like more socialism to me.

[rjsimmon]

since it seems to indicate that the law is working as promised.

Imagine that, make it a law that folks have to have insurance and the uninsured numbers drop...

[WP Lonestar]

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.

[bert]

Trivial Fake News

[Buckeye McFrog]

Medicare has been the camel’s nose under the tent since the day it passed in 1965. The original plan was to gradually dial back the eligibility age until you got to de-facto national healthcare.

Had it not passed insurance companies would have demanded it, because older and sicker people are a pure drain on the bottom line. Better to shove them onto the public purse.

It’s why I believe single payer is sadly inevitable. Because an environment where insurers get to cherry-pick only profitable customers is not sustainable, politically or financially.

[ontap]

I read somewhere that the actual percent of people uninsured did not change during Obama’s tenure.

[Brad from Tennessee]

Baby boomers are moving into Medicare in droves and buying relatively cheap gap coverage. And according to the article:

[What has changed is the dramatic growth in government insurance. That went from 16.8% of the under-65 population in 2005 to 26.6% now. . .That translates into 29 million more people getting health benefits from a government program — mainly Medicaid — over the past 11 years. Just since 2010, the number has climbed by nearly 14 million.]

Studies have shown that health outcomes for poor people using emergency rooms are more favorable than patients in Medicaid.

What the article doesn't specifically address is the surge in the veteran population resulting in a surge of new Veterans Administration hospital patients.

For the last few years I had to include in my IRS return a document mailed from VA saying I had access to in their program—even though I haven't used their services for 4 or 5 years. For purposes of identifying health insurance delinquents IRS excludes veterans eligible for VA medical services.