Via Charles Gaba:
Gallup’s new polling shows 5% of the country has gone from uninsured to insured over the past six months:
So, let’s see here. The Gallup poll only includes adults over 18, so…
- Total Population of the US: 314 million
- Total Adult Population: about 240 million
- 5% of 240 million: 12 million
By an amazing coincidence, back on May 5th Gallup issued similar survey results which showed a reduction in the overall national uninsured rate of at least 11 million, so this survey, using slightly different wording and a different approach, simply reinforces that one…although the earlier one included Medicaid as well, so there’s obviously some overlap/churn going on here.
This thing is working and it is working well within design parameters. There are a couple more positive shocks to the system that we should anticipate as Pennsylvania, Virginia and Indiana are highly likely to expand Medicaid through the waiver process sometime this year with a 1/1/15 effective date. The second round of open enrollment looks like it will have more plans, more competition and mostly functioning websites. People are getting the “gay marriage in Massachusetts” learning by observing experience right now. The teabaggers won’t learn, but quite a few people who are leery of Obamacare are seeing that not much is changing in a bad way. Premiums are going up a little, deductibles and co-pays are going up a little, but hey, that has been the case for my entire life.
This thing is going to work ( and soon enough I can breathe long enough to wonk out again).