Ted, Obamacare enrollment in California surges I don't see how this is a "surge." From the article:
Some 144,146 applications were completed and 49,708 people selected commercial plans in the first week of December, compared to 403,323 completed applications and 109,296 enrollments in the previous two months since the Covered California marketplace opened, officials said. And then …
California is arguably the most crucial state for Obamacare. It has more uninsured people than any other state (7.4 million in 2011), and the law's supporters are counting on Californians to make up a good fraction of the 7 million people the White House hopes to enroll in health insurance through the law during this first open enrollment period, which runs through March 31. So if there were 7.4 million uninsured people in California (according to 2011 numbers), and only 160,000 signed up through Covered California, how would that amount to a "surge"?
Plus we don't know how many of those 160,000 new enrollees were previously uninsured, or whether they're just signing up because their existing insurance is going to drop them by the end of the year thanks to ObamaCare.
Meanwhile, the CA insurance commissioner said that more than one million Californians will have their health plans cancelled thanks to ObamaCare regulations. Not all of them will have to go through Covered California to get new health insurance plans, but a good percentage will.
Bottom line is that this article is nothing but a pro-ObamaCare puff piece. Maybe the number of enrollees will truly surge before March 31 of next year, but until then, meaningless data points like the one your article brings up will amount to nothing.
Tenchusatsu |
