President Obama announced Tuesday evening that Obamacare enrollments for the second year have reached
11.4 million sign-ups so far. Forty-six states have extended their deadlines for a number of reasons from an income-verification glitch in the federal system to bad weather to tax confusion. More than a million enrollees signed up in the last nine days.
A total of 11.4 million Americans enrolled for coverage through an ACA marketplace, well ahead of the 10.3 million enrollees the Obama administration projected before this year’s open-enrollment process began. This total, though impressive, does not include the millions of additional Americans who are now covered through Medicaid expansion or young adults who have insurance through their family’s plan thanks to the law’s consumer protections.
Of the 11.4 million, 8.6 million received coverage through healthcare.gov – the consumers whose coverage is jeopardized by the King v. Burwell case at the Supreme Court.
Also note, this number is likely to change a bit, though we’re not sure in which direction. Some of the 11.4 million will fail to pay their premiums and will end up losing this coverage. This happened last year, when enrollment totals dipped from about 8 million to a little over 7 million.
On the other hand, the total may increase in April if, as suspected, the administration re-opens a special enrollment period in April, helping uninsured consumers avoid a tax penalty.
That's a lot of people. A lot of people who now have
affordable health insurance. Charles Gaba puts the total, including all the young people who've been able to stay on their parents plans, the people who are in expanded Medicaid and the regular enrollees at
32 million. That's the primary success of the law but it's only part of the success. Healthcare spending has
slowed, dramatically. Like the lowest growth in half a century dramatically. A slowdown in Medicare spending is already
reducing the deficit and extending the life of the Medicare program. Somewhere around
50,000 lives have been saved because of measures in the law that make hospitals safer.
That's what Republicans want to repeal, make go away entirely and have absolutely no intention of replacing should the Supreme Court decide to cut one of the most critical components out from under it.