House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi
says her colleagues will "stand tall in support of the Affordable Care Act.” They should because it's not that hard to do, and there's plenty of ammunition for them to do it. They just have to talk about a few simple realities.
Let's start with the fact that HealthCare.gov is being fixed. It might not be 100 percent fixed by the end of this month, but it will get there. Aside from Republicans crowing about it, the majority of the public is pretty accustomed to waiting for software to work. (After all, Windows still has about 80 percent of the market.) But more than that, the number of people whose lives are being disrupted by having to upgrade their insurance pales in comparison to the number of people who will finally be able to get the insurance they desperately need.
[T]he market for individual policies is about 30 million people. Of those, more than 20 million are uninsured. For virtually all of them, Obamacare is an unalloyed blessing. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that about 81% of all individual policy-holders will be eligible for income-based insurance subsidies. [...]
What about individual policy-holders? They number somewhere between 8.5 million and 9.5 million. [...] If three-quarters of the individual customers will be eligible for insurance subsidies, that leaves 2.1 million to 2.4 million Americans paying the full freight.
Two and a half million (generously) versus 20 million who are uninsured? Yes, it's time for Democrats to put this all into perspective for the country, and to reiterate the necessity of passing this law in the first place. But if they need some talking points for talking to the two million, Jonathon Cohn
has them, breaking down the media's (and Republicans') mythology about these cancellations.
- First, people who have these individual, non-group plans are the most dissatisfied with them of any insured group. Nearly half of them rate them poor or fair, more than double the dissatisfaction of people in Medicare, Medicaid or with employer insurance.
- Second, there is already huge turnover in insurance in this group: less than 20 percent of the people in this market keep their plans for more than two years; half only keep the policies for six months or fewer.
- Third, many, many of these people will be receiving subsidies to help them pay for much better insurance.
- Fourth, it sucks for the people having to pay more, but they're "income is above the national median and probably way above the national median." Relative to most of the people getting insurance for the first time, they can afford it. Better plans means better coverage and for many people, less spent on actual medical care, even though premiums might be higher. And, they'd likely be hit by big premium hikes in their current plans in the next year or two anyway, because that's the way that market works.
These are the realities of the health care market, and of what the Affordable Care Act will do in it. It's absolutely critical that Democrats keep their eye on the prize: health insurance coverage for 20 million who never had it before, along with all the other benefits that the law has already brought to millions. That's the message elected Democrats need to keep reminding the media and the American public of, while the administration needs to focus every single effort on getting HealthCare.gov operating smoothly. Panicking about the disgruntled people getting a disproportionate amount of media attention is the last thing to do.