• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

We’re not going back!

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

No one could have predicted…

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Mobile Menu

  • Four Directions Montana
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2024 Elections
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Galluping good news

Galluping good news

by David Anderson|  April 7, 20147:49 am| 30 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance

FacebookTweetEmail

In U.S., #Uninsured Rate Lowest Since 2008… http://t.co/pDicPrmNXw pic.twitter.com/YDYrzPVSUJ

— GallupNews (@GallupNews) April 7, 2014

Gallup 2014-04-07

Doing some very basic algebra, a 2.4% drop in the uninsured rate from the pre-Exchange peak means roughly 7 million people in the survey population universe have insurance during the last week of the 1st quarter of 2014 than they did last fall. This is a combination of Medicaid expansion, Medicaid wood-workers, new CHIP enrollments and Exchange policies. The ten million is a net number, so it includes the negative one million or so people who had individual policies that were cancelled but who did not find a new policy on the Exchanges.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Monday Morning Open Thread: Nancy Smashing
Next Post: The economics of working the refs »

Reader Interactions

30Comments

  1. 1.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    April 7, 2014 at 8:01 am

    Shouldn’t that be a 2.4% drop in the uninsured rate instead of “a 3.4% drop in the unemployment rate”?

    (Sorry, my inner editor is awake with a vengeance this morning. Blame it on the fanfic.)

  2. 2.

    Richard Mayhew

    April 7, 2014 at 8:13 am

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: corrected and updated!

  3. 3.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    April 7, 2014 at 8:27 am

    What are “Medicaid wood-workers”?

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    April 7, 2014 at 8:30 am

    Unfortunately, my oldest is not among them (28, working poor in MO) and my youngest will be joining them next year (26, working poor in LA).

  5. 5.

    geg6

    April 7, 2014 at 8:34 am

    Is this what they mean when they say “too big to fail”?

  6. 6.

    geg6

    April 7, 2014 at 8:35 am

    @GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):

    Yeah, I wondered that, too. But I don’t always read every word of Richard’s posts, so I thought it might be some kind of nomenclature that I hadn’t caught.

  7. 7.

    dmsilev

    April 7, 2014 at 8:36 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: Both Medicaid-expansion-rejectionist states? Sigh. Thanks, Justice Roberts!

  8. 8.

    mai naem

    April 7, 2014 at 8:44 am

    Are these really the final numbers? I thought the Obama numbers weren’t final numbers – I mean that they didn’t include all the state run exchanges. Also, to be perfectly honest, if this is the final number, I am a little disappointed. We’re comparing it to ’08 and we haven’t beaten ’08? I realize ’08 was the worst of the recession and that this is just the beginning of O-care, I just thought the numbers would look better. The only silver lining is that many people now have policies that are actually worth the paper they’re written on.

  9. 9.

    Richard Mayhew

    April 7, 2014 at 8:47 am

    @mai naem: This is survey data, so it is not an official final number, and honestly, there will never be an official final number, just a variety of official projections with different estimation parameters.

  10. 10.

    Richard Mayhew

    April 7, 2014 at 8:48 am

    @GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):

    Medicaid wood-workers — a term used by ACASignups.net for people who were eligible for Medicaid under the old rules but had not signed up.

    Open enrollment for the Exchanges was a massive shock to the system, so people who never thought they were Medicaid eligible found out that they were eligible and thus “came out of the woodwork”

  11. 11.

    sparrow

    April 7, 2014 at 8:49 am

    So who are these 16% that are not insured? Can they all be stubborn red-staters? People who live under a rock? Poor bastards that got left out of medicaid expansion (but then, couldn’t they still get a bronze plan at least?)

  12. 12.

    Patricia Kayden

    April 7, 2014 at 8:50 am

    This is great news. Dems need to run on it.

  13. 13.

    Cervantes

    April 7, 2014 at 8:58 am

    @mai naem:

    Are these really the final numbers?

    No, it’s a Gallup poll.

    A relatively large poll (with a correspondingly small margin of error), but still a poll.

  14. 14.

    Richard Mayhew

    April 7, 2014 at 9:05 am

    @sparrow:

    Lots of different people:

    *foreign born nationals who don’t have appropriate documentation to be in the country.

    * Red state residents who don’t qualifty for Legacy Medicaid and can’t get on the Exchange

    * Rand-oid assholes who bleat about freedumb.

    * People who aren’t aware of the Exchanges

    * People who looked at the Exchanges and decided to go naked instead

    * People who don’t believe that the government could actually improve their lives

    * A lot of other people who just don’t know.

  15. 15.

    EconWatcher

    April 7, 2014 at 9:22 am

    @Richard Mayhew:

    Of these, the biggest concern seems to be, “* Red state residents who don’t qualifty for Legacy Medicaid and can’t get on the Exchange.”

    How big of a donut hole was created by the refusal of Republican state governments to participate in Medicaid expansion? Is there any way to reach these people without more legislation (which obviously isn’t coming anytime soon)?

    Many thanks.

  16. 16.

    MomSense

    April 7, 2014 at 9:25 am

    My friend’s husband was dragged into health insurance kicking and screaming (he thinks Obama caused the 2008 stock mkt crash on purpose to usher in soshulism). He was shocked at how affordable it is. My friend told him as a joke that they just needed to get micro-chipped to complete the process and he believed her!!

    Anyway, they signed up for medical and dental and it is going to make a huge difference for them.

  17. 17.

    Pen

    April 7, 2014 at 9:31 am

    “Red state residents who don’t qualifty for Legacy Medicaid and can’t get on the Exchange”

    My wife and I live in Wisconsin on the MN-WI border. I’m a college student and work part time with no insurance offered, she works for a corporation that, while they have insurance, it’s extremely expensive (as much as both our car payments), requires we use the worst hospital in the city, and covers only the legal minimum. Thanks to Walker’s antics we have some of the highest unsubsidized exchange rates in the nation, and it is quite literally cheaper for us to move across the border and commute to work than it would be to get insurance in this environment.

    We’re house hunting now.

  18. 18.

    WaterGirl

    April 7, 2014 at 10:17 am

    @Pen:

    Thanks to Walker’s antics we have some of the highest unsubsidized exchange rates in the nation, and it is quite literally cheaper for us to move across the border and commute to work than it would be to get insurance in this environment.

    We’re house hunting now.

    I’m sorry. These republican governors have a lot to answer for. I seriously wonder how their family members can stand to look at them when they are so obviously hurting a whole lot of people for political reasons.

    So glad you have the ability to move, though.

  19. 19.

    willard

    April 7, 2014 at 10:53 am

    The other important metric is the number of people that went from a high deductible insurance scam to a functional insurance plan. Have any polls looked at these numbers?

  20. 20.

    Ruckus

    April 7, 2014 at 1:12 pm

    @sparrow:
    They could be like the 27 yr old I work with who will “never sign up for Obamacare”. Stated that his old policy was $100/month and his new one was $236 so he’s not buying. My looking at the exchanges for CA showed me several silver policies around $236 per month for me(almost 3 times his age!), they did have subsidies but still. My big question is what the hell policy did he have that cost $100 per month last year? This sounds like an elephant to apples comparison to me.

  21. 21.

    StringOnAStick

    April 7, 2014 at 1:20 pm

    @Ruckus: He probably had one of those” total crap, pays for very little once the shit hits the fan” policies, and is too blinded by O-hate to be able to see it.

  22. 22.

    Mnemosyne

    April 7, 2014 at 2:18 pm

    @StringOnAStick:

    Straight white single men under 30 with no pre-existing conditions used to get a really good deal with health insurance, because they never went to the doctor and pretty much only had accidental injuries, so their premiums were low. Now that the risk is being spread throughout the entire population, they are paying more than they used to. Some of them (like the guy Ruckus works with) don’t realize that they were getting an artificially low price and are now whining about how unfair it all is.

  23. 23.

    Ruckus

    April 7, 2014 at 2:31 pm

    @StringOnAStick:
    So you’ve met him?

    I believe that he may just be an over exposed, under informed young person. If he isn’t working he’s on his smart phone. Also he lives at home, has a decent job and I think, believes that he is always correct, no matter the context or subject.

  24. 24.

    Ruckus

    April 7, 2014 at 2:34 pm

    @StringOnAStick:
    @Mnemosyne:
    Both of you are most likely correct. He may have also been paying the(or some) additional cost on his parents insurance.

  25. 25.

    Chris

    April 7, 2014 at 2:35 pm

    @Pen:

    My sympathies, all of them. Florida didn’t expand it either, so anyone under… oh, $10,000 income per year or thereabouts, according to what the ACA workers showed me today – not being eligible for ACA subsidies, is SOL.

    I knew Medicaid was a bitch to get on, but I didn’t realize until I called them for information just how much of a bitch: unless you have a child, or you’re past [can’t remember the number] age, or a few other conditions, you’re not eligible. “My income is an absolute zero” is not considered sufficient reason to deserve help with your health insurance, so even though it’s supposedly the last-ditch program for the very poor, poverty is still not enough unless it’s aggravated by one of a few additional conditions. Don’t know how much of it is the program vs. just the fact that I’m in the South.

  26. 26.

    Ruckus

    April 7, 2014 at 2:45 pm

    FYWP

  27. 27.

    Ruckus

    April 7, 2014 at 2:58 pm

    @Chris:
    The south is not the only place Medicaid is/used to be like that.
    Before the expansion, here in CA, I didn’t qualify because I’m male without certain illnesses. Poor wasn’t considered until I met the other criteria. A woman didn’t need to have the same severity of illness, but poor wasn’t enough by itself as I understood. This is partially from a friend who does get it because she has a lot of issues.
    With the expansion that has changed. What does amaze me a bit is that to get Medicare part A I have to pay out of my SS($104/month this yr). Now to get health insurance at 64 I would get, for the same SS income, if that was my only income, no cost to me Medicaid.

  28. 28.

    Mnemosyne

    April 7, 2014 at 3:59 pm

    @Chris:

    My friend’s sister was able to get on Medicaid in Mississippi, but she has a serious seizure disorder that means she can’t work, so she was “unemployed+” for Medicaid purposes.

  29. 29.

    mclaren

    April 7, 2014 at 6:54 pm

    Richard Mayhew is lying to once again.

    We’re supposed to celebrate a rate of uninsured people among the American population that is higher now than it was when Barack Obama was elected.

    This is the great victory?

    This is the triumph we’re supposed to celebrate?

    Email John Cole and beg him to get this lying superwealthy health insurance CEO off the front page.

  30. 30.

    Richard Mayhew

    April 8, 2014 at 11:33 am

    @mclaren:

    McClaren — a couple of questions about your assumptions about me.

    1) Does my family of four qualify for federal subsidies if we had to go on the Exchange. Reminder, I work, my wife works, and I have a second job as a referee.

    What do you think my job title is?

    How many people do I supervise?

    I’m curious as I know you’re assumptions are wrong, but I don’t know by how much

    2) What is the counterfactual as you seem to be neglecting the impact of a massive recession and state level austerity that gutted the legacy Medicaid non-core services to non-core populations might have on insurance rates.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

Recent Comments

  • Wapiti on Monday Morning Open Thread: The Tariff We Pay for Civilization (Apr 15, 2024 @ 11:44am)
  • TBone on Take the Fucking Win (Apr 15, 2024 @ 11:43am)
  • Brachiator on Monday Morning Open Thread: The Tariff We Pay for Civilization (Apr 15, 2024 @ 11:42am)
  • Mr. Bemused Senior on Take the Fucking Win (Apr 15, 2024 @ 11:42am)
  • Mousebumples on Monday Morning Open Thread: The Tariff We Pay for Civilization (Apr 15, 2024 @ 11:42am)

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Balloon Juice Meetups!

All Meetups
Talk of Meetups – Meetup Planning
Proposed BJ meetups list from frosty

Fundraising 2023-24

Wis*Dems Supreme Court + SD-8
Virginia House Races
Four Directions – Montana
Worker Power AZ
Four Directions – Arizona
Four Directions – Nevada

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
Positive Climate News
War in Ukraine
Cole’s “Stories from the Road”
Classified Documents Primer

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Twitter / Spoutible

Balloon Juice (Spoutible)
WaterGirl (Spoutible)
TaMara (Spoutible)
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
ActualCitizensUnited

Political Action 2024

Postcard Writing Information

Balloon Juice for Four Directions AZ

Donate

Balloon Juice for Four Directions NV

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2024 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!