Raft Of Good News For Obamacare

"Where's The Train Wreck?"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/01/wheres-train-wreck.html

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Insurers aren't pulling out; more are planning to go in. "Health insurers got their first taste of Obamacare this year. And they want seconds. Insurers saw disaster in the fall when Obamacare's rollout flopped and HealthCare.gov was a mess. But a strong March enrollment surge, along with indications that younger and healthier people had begun signing up, has changed their attitude. Around the country, insurers are considering expanding their stake in the Obamacare exchanges next year, bringing their business to more states and counties. Some health plans that skipped the new marketplaces altogether this year are ready to dive in next year....None of the big-name insurers have signaled plans to shrink their presence or bail altogether after the first rocky year. And a slew of smaller health plans are already making moves to join more states or get into the Obamacare business for the first time." Kyle Cheney and Brett Norman in Politico.

Video: 3 signs that Democrats can breather easier on Obamacare. Gerald Seib in The Wall Street Journal.

Those 7.5 million exchange signups are only part of the story. "The Obama administration is tracking the number of plans purchased on HealthCare.gov and on the state exchanges, and this month reported that it had exceeded expectations by signing up 7.5 million people. In addition, federal officials have said that 3 million people have enrolled in Medicaid this year. But what's often overlooked is that enrollment in private health plans outside the marketplaces is also booming. The federal government hasn't been counting the number of people who buy new plans directly from insurance carriers -- and that number could be substantial."Annie Feidt in NPR.

This new poll may make Democrats happy: Americans increasingly prefer Democrats to Republicans on health care. Gabriel Debenedetti in Reuters.

But keep this in mind: We may not know the true Obamacare story for a while. "After months of focusing on how many people have or haven't signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, we now have a rough total (7.5 million) and everyone's keen to get to the bigger questions: How well is the law working? How many of those who signed up have paid their premiums and are actually getting coverage? How many were uninsured before they signed up? And just how big has the drop been in the number of uninsured people? Unfortunately, the answers to some of these questions simply aren't knowable -- or, at least, not knowable yet." Julie Rovner in NPR.

Time's up, procrastinators: Open enrollment is done. "For Obamacare procrastinators, time's up. Yesterday was the last day of a two-week health-law extension for hundreds of thousands of people who couldn't finish their enrollment by March 31, the official deadline to sign up for a federally subsidized insurance plan in 2014....Starting today, Americans can sign up for private health plans using government insurance exchanges only if they experience a life-changing event such as marriage, the birth of a child or the loss of a job. They may be able to buy coverage on their own without a premium discount from subsidies and sign-ups continue year round for Medicaid, the government program for low-income people, which has been expanded in 26 states to cover more adults with low wages. The enrollment period for 2015 plans begins Nov. 15." Alex Wayne in Bloomberg.

There's a new Obamacare conspiracy theory. Here's why you should be skeptical of it. "The subject is the Current Population Survey, or CPS, which is one of the tools that the government uses to measure how many people have health insurance. The Census Bureau operates the survey and, as Pear reported, it is changing the wording of survey questions. That decision will make it difficult to compare future results to past results. Conspiracy theorists will say that Obama is 'cooking the books' -- in this case, by trying to hide data on whether the law is actually helping the uninsured. Count me as extremely skeptical. The change may or may not make sense on the merits. But it shouldn't change what we know about the law's impact on the number of uninsured -- or even when we know it." Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic.

Why you shouldn't worry about the survey changes. "What's being missed here is that the Obama administration will use the new survey questions to collect data for 2013, the year prior to Obamacare's health insurance expansion, a senior administration official says. The Census Bureau reports the health insurance rate with a one-year delay; in September 2013, for example, the agency reported the percent of Americans without coverage in 2012. It will most likely report the uninsured rate for 2013 sometime this coming fall. In other words: The survey will make it difficult to compare the uninsured rate for 2012, the last year for the old questions, and 2013, the first year for the new questions. But making the change now means that 2013 and 2014 -- the year before and after Obamacare's big programs started -- are using the same question set." Sarah Kliff in Vox.

Other health care reads:

Explainer: Are health care costs about to rise quickly? Sarah Kliff in Vox.

Prices are soaring for specialty drugs. Katie Thomas in The New York Times.