State Snapshots Of Obamacare Enrollment WebMD News from Kaiser Health News
By KHN Editors
webmd.com
Full states data:
kff.org
Obamacare Enrollment 'Surge' Continues Into 2014 In Some States
Reuters | By Sharon Begley Posted: 01/15/2014 5:46 pm EST | Updated: 01/16/2014 10:34 am EST
huffingtonpost.com
The 5 States Most Responsible for Obamacare's Early Success By Sean Williams | More Articles
January 16, 2014 |
fool.com
State
# of Individuals That Have Selected a Marketplace Plan
California
| 498,794
| Florida
| 158,030
| New York
| 156,902
| Texas
| 118,532
| North Carolina
| 107,778
|
Source: Department of Health and Human Services (link opens PDF).
Probably the first thing that stands out from having previously looked at the most important states to Obamacare based on very early enrollment figures is that we now see a much better balance between states that operate their own individual health exchange and those that use Healthcare.gov as their marketplace. Florida and Texas had made the previous list, but they were were major stragglers behind New York and California. Even though California remains by far the most prominent reason Obamacare will succeed or fail, the importance of Florida, Texas, and North Carolina can't be forgotten, either.
These states combined for 1.04 million of the 2.15 million total enrollees, or 48.3% of all members who've selected a marketplace plan thus far.
Clearly there are some "duh!" factors that we've covered previously that would help explain the high number of enrollments in each of these states.
For one, many of these states have huge populations, and a larger population should proportionately have a higher number of uninsured persons prior to the implementation of Obamacare. In other words, higher population states would be a smart target for most insurance companies looking to add new members.
Traditionally blue states that favored Democratic candidates over the past couple of elections also have delivered strong enrollment figures. It really shouldn't come as a huge surprise that states that offered their support for Obamacare's implementation are the one's seeing the greatest number of people signing up. Although Texas certainly isn't a blue state and Florida is far from a lock to lean toward the Democrats come election time, the sixth through ninth states which are unlisted in our example above (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Washington, and Illinois) definitely had pro-Obamacare tendencies prior to its implementation.
Another factor worth considering here is that a number of these states are in the middle of the pack when it comes to median household income, according to three-year data from the U.S. Census Bureau. With the exception of Washington at No. 10 and North Carolina at No. 40, each of the nine top-enrolling states tend to have a middling level of household income....
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