Just a few of the happy customers.
Here's one more nail in the Republicans' anti-Obamacare coffin. There's plenty of good news for the law in its first full year of implementation: millions of people have insurance through it, the uninsured rate has dropped significantly, premium cost hikes for the next year will be very modest, to name a few good points. Now the Commonwealth Fund adds a
new survey of Obamacare customers and finds that a big majority is really happy.
The survey found that while 62 percent of adults who visited the marketplace rated their overall experience as fair or poor, two-thirds (68%) of those who purchased marketplace plans are happy with them, rating their plans as good, very good, or excellent. Seventy percent are confident they will be able to get the health care they need and 71 percent are confident they will get high-quality care.
“The survey findings show that people with lower incomes are finding health insurance coverage through the marketplaces that is comparable to employer plans in affordability and cost-protection,” said Sara Collins, Commonwealth Fund Vice President for Health Care Coverage and Access, and a co-author of the report. “The subsidies are doing what they were designed to do—make comprehensive coverage attainable for low- and moderate-income families without employer-based health insurance.
They also found that 61 percent of people with exchange plans say the are either very or somewhat affordable, and that about 70 percent of low or moderate incomes are paying less than $125 a month in premiums. That's comparable to employer-based insurance plan premiums, and the survey also found that deductibles were comparable as well. Satisfaction with the exchange experience is also pretty high: 57 percent said it was easy to compare premium costs and 48 percent said it was easy to compare out-of-pocket costs in plans; more than three out of five said it was easy to determine if they were eligible either for subsidies or Medicaid; 46 percent said it was easy to find plans that fit their coverage needs and 43 percent said it was easy to find a plan they could afford.
All of this affordable health insurance was made possible by the law and the subsidies it created. That's what Republicans still want to undo. They've vowed an early repeal vote in the Senate, if they take that body in November. That would of course be vetoed by President Obama, so the law isn't really in jeopardy from the Congress in the near future.
It could, however, be in jeopardy from the courts though that likelihood is slim. The Halbig suit, challenging the subsidies for people in the 36 states using the federal exchange, is being considered now by the full D.C. Circuit after it set aside the ruling from a three-judge panel that the subsidies were only available to people in the 14 states with their own exchanges. The full court is expected to rule with the government and agree with another court, the Fourth Circuit, which ruled against challengers in a similar case. That case has been appealed to the Supreme Court, and now they're just waiting around to see what the D.C. Circuit does. With millions of people now happily and affordably insured, it doesn't seem likely that even John Roberts' SCOTUS would be willing to kill it.