Filling In The Big Picture: Enrollment Numbers And Goals
News outlets examine the goals, numbers and challenges that continue to surround efforts to enroll new beneficiaries in health coverage either through the health law's new insurance marketplaces or Medicaid.
Politico: 7 Million Obamacare Customers?
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius once described 7 million new Obamacare customers in the first year as what "success looks like." The White House is now trying to affix another label to the estimate: meaningless. It might be too late. For months, the Obama administration embraced the projection by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office as a way to explain enrollment goals, boosting their political significance. But the broken HealthCare.gov website caused the program to lag far behind on signing up customers, and it’s a steep climb to register 7 million people by the March deadline (Budoff Brown and Millman, 12/11).
ProPublica: As Healthcare.gov Rebounds, New Glitches Hit Medicaid Enrollments
Before healthcare.gov, the federal health insurance marketplace, was fixed late last month, supporters of the Affordable Care Act looked to the law's expansion of Medicaid for solace. In October, many more people enrolled in coverage through Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor, than chose private plans in the health insurance marketplace, the New York Times reported earlier this month (Ornstein, 12/10).
Meanwhile, The Fiscal Times reports on how Millenials and others might be viewing enrollment options --
The Fiscal Times: Millenials: Obamacare For Thee, But Not For Me
Remember all those stories last week about how Millennials were abandoning Obamacare? Well a new survey out this morning comes to a slightly different conclusion: Millennials love Obamacare, just not if they're the ones signing up for it. A poll of 1,013 adults conducted in mid-November took an interesting angle on the question of public perception of President Obama's signature domestic initiative. Rather than asking people if they were planning to sign up themselves, they asked respondents to put themselves in the shoes of a theoretical, average American (Garver, 12/11).
