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We know that about 10 million more people have insurance coverage this year as a result of the Affordable Care Act but until now it has been difficult to say much about who was getting that Obamacare coverage — where they live, their age, their income and other such details. Now Kevin Quealy and Margot Sanger-Katz report in the NYT that a new data set is providing a clearer picture of which people gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The data is the output of a statistical model based on a large survey of adults and shows that the law has done something rather unusual in the American economy this century: It has pushed back against inequality, essentially redistributing income — in the form of health insurance or insurance subsidies — to many of the groups that have fared poorly over the last few decades. The biggest winners from the law include people between the ages of 18 and 34; blacks; Hispanics; and people who live in rural areas. The areas with the largest increases in the health insurance rate, for example, include rural Arkansas and Nevada; southern Texas; large swaths of New Mexico, Kentucky and West Virginia; and much of inland California and Oregon.
Despite many Republican voters’ disdain for the Affordable Care Act, parts of the country that lean the most heavily Republican (according to 2012 presidential election results) showed significantly more insurance gains than places where voters lean strongly Democratic. That partly reflects underlying rates of insurance. In liberal places, like Massachusetts and Hawaii, previous state policies had made insurance coverage much more widespread, leaving less room for improvement. But the correlation also reflects trends in wealth and poverty. Many of the poorest and most rural states in the country tend to favor Republican politicians.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 31 2014, @11:37PM
Yes, sir. Obamacare is great. Absolutely fantastic.
See all these people with the subsidies for their premiums? The ones who couldn't afford health care? Now, thanks to the magic of Obamacare they have insurance they can't afford to use because of the massive copays. But they have insurance! Great plan!
What would you pay? Don't answer yet! Because now you discover that the law was in fact carefully jiggered to show a minimum of effect on the budget by the rules Congress follows at the time it was signed, but they just discover now (to their eternal shock and horror) that it shows every sign of slamming the budget with a gigantic sledgehammer.
But there's more! Lots of people still have no insurance, nor are they covered under the native single payer systems such as Medicare, Medicaid, VA and so on. How can that be? Turns out the universal mandate isn't that darned universal, and even if it were that there's a limit to the crap the federal government can force down the throats of the states if the states just don't want to play ball. Thus spake SCOTUS.
But of course, it's all the fault of all those people in rural areas who are just too durned stupid to realise that the democrats bulled it through Congress as some of the most partisan legislation in living memory, even using reconciliation just to get it passed, did it for them. And now those ignorant muddy redneck hicks are ungrateful! Shame on them. Fortunately, all you super-clever urban voters who have more money and more brains clearly figured it out for the benefit of your poor rural cousins.
Of course, the democrats are delighted to point out to the idiots who live in the sticks that the rate of inflation in medical care has dropped (a little), which is good news! Except of course that owing to one after another legislative and regulatory decision, the cost was already so sky-high that only people like the millionaires who pushed it through Congress can afford medical care without insurance anyhow. So it's getting more expensive more slowly. I guess that's worth a slow clap from the flyover states. Of course, there's no real evidence that Obamacare passing had nearly as much influence on the health care industry inflation rate as the overall economic slowdown. It certainly did nothing significant to fight, say, the way the AMA restricts medical training. Because rent-seeking on the part of urban professionals is fine, but just let some clodhopping meth freak dream of selling whole, unpasteurised milk to a soccer mom, and it's time for the big guns.
But Pelosicare (because, let's face it, Obama didn't write it any more than Romney wrote Romneycare - and both of those guys were presiding over firmly blue legislatures at the time of signing) is great stuff! It'll show immeasurable benefits any day now! Like, literally immeasurable. Those pigheaded rural inbred throwbacks are just too stupid to actually grasp the value of something they can't measure. That's the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01 2014, @06:38AM
Protip: Romneycare and Obamacare are the same thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 02 2014, @03:35AM
Protip: Romneycare and Obamacare are the same thing.
Actually, there are a few salient differences. Such as for instance the authority under which they were brought in (police power vs taxation power) the precise rules on the insurance companies, the scope (state vs federal), the degree of cooperation and consent achieved in the legislative systems, the entire mechanic of interaction with medicaid expansion, the source and disposition of subsidies, the regulation of medical devices ...
In fact, there's a whole bunch different. And yet, even if they were totally identical except for the name and jurisdiction (which they obviously are not) it would still be putting the federal law under the justification that what's good for Massachusetts is good for Wyoming. The evidence at hand strongly suggest that it's not.
I actually helped people research and set up their PPACA insurance choices. I dealt with them crying when they realised that they were being forced to buy something they couldn't afford to buy, and couldn't afford to use. All I could do was shrug and apologise. I'm sure the numbers sounded good in a mahogany and plush rug conference room on the east coast, but where people have rough hands and deep tans, they're sheer financial murder.
A lot of folks I dealt with walked out, planning to pay a tax penalty and hoping not to get sick.
Your tax dollars at work, folks.