The final open enrollment numbers for Obamacare this year are "so-so" in the words of Charles Gaba, but about what the administration had predicted last fall: 12.7 million. But within those respectable but not amazing numbers are some significant gains for a number of states.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Eight states saw a significant drop last year in the number of residents going without health insurance, according to a government report out Tuesday that has implications for the presidential campaign.
Politically, the eight states with statistically significant coverage gains in the National Health Interview Survey are a mix of red, blue and purple. They are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, and New York. Five have GOP governors. […]
In addition to the eight states with statistically significant coverage gains, the report named another 10 with notable reductions in the percentage of uninsured residents. However, the changes in these states did not meet the survey's test for statistical significance.
That second group included Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island. Seven of those states have Republican governors.
Some of these gains are a reflection of a continuing economic recovery, particularly in the states that haven't yet accepted Medicaid expansion, most notably Florida. Because, yes, the economy has been recovering. And Obamacare hasn't killed jobs.
As Kevin Drum notes, another Republican talking point against Obamacare has spectacularly failed to come true—employers haven't dropped coverage on millions of people. In fact, "total private coverage increased by more than 16 million through the middle of 2015. […] After four years of private coverage hovering around 61 percent of the population, it jumped up to 66 percent within the space of a single year."
Just imagine how it could have succeeded without facing Republican obstruction for the past six years.