When you have diarrhea of the mouth and a "TEN BILLION DOLLAR" megaphone as Donald Trump does, sooner or later you're going to shoot your mouth off about every conceivable topic under the sun. I knew it was just a matter of time before he got to the Affordable Care Act, and while I didn't know exactly what he'd say, I knew that whatever it was, it'd be easily debunked.
Donald Trump, the celebrity businessman who has shaken up the Republican presidential race, has been attacking both Republicans and Democrats in his speeches and interviews. At one point in a July 11, 2015, speech in Phoenix, he took aim at the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.
He singled out the healthcare.gov website, which was unveiled in the fall of 2013 with a panoply of bugs and glitches, calling it "the $5 billion website for Obamacare, which never worked. Still doesn't work."
PolitiFact does a pretty good job of debunking both claims.
The obligatory update. Assuming around 7,500 off-season QHP selections per day nationally, the grand total should cross the 12.9 million milestone sometime this week if it hasn't already, and should pass the 13 million mark at the end of July.
This won't likely have any impact on the currently effectuated number of course, which is likely still hovering around the 10.3 million mark due to non-payments and normal attrition, although some limited evidence from Washington State and Colorado suggests that this might be a bit higher--perhaps 10.4 million or so.
Last week I noted that of the 33 million people still uninsured in the United States, around 6.5 million of them can't be covered via Affordable Care Act provisions because they're undocumented immigrants, who aren't legally allowed to #GetCovered via either the ACA exchanges (private coverage) or Medicaid expansion (public coverage). Another 3.7 million legal residents/citizens, of course, are caught in the Medicaid Gap. I also brought up the undocumented immigrant factor in a piece yesterday trying to break out the other portions of that 33 million total.
Anyway, in the comments, "dawgitall" asked a reasonable question: If there's around 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. total (everyone seems to agree on that estimate), and 6.5 million of them aren't insured at all, what's the deal with the remaining 4.5 million?
Last week, after the latest quarterly Gallup survey came out stating that the uninsured rate among U.S. adults had dropped to just 11.4%, I did some number-crunching and pointed out that:
About 6.5 million of those 33 million are undocumented immigrants who are therefore not eligible for coverage via the ACA anyway
Another 3.7 million are folks caught in the "Medicaid Gap" in 21 Republican-controlled states...these are people who a) make less than 100% of the federal poverty line (making them ineligible for federal tax credits to purchase private policies) but b) aren't eligible for traditional Medicaid either, meaning they're basically screwed.
When you subtract those two populations, it leaves roughly 22.8 million people who are still uninsured. So, who are they?
Well, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, as of 2014, there were roughly 13.8 million uninsured eligible for Medicaid (either traditional or via ACA expansion). Since then, thanks to several more states going through with expanding the program (Pennsylvania, Indiana and, any day now, Montana), this number has increased to around 14.3 million. According to the March Medicaid report released by CMS in June, there's been a net increase of 12.2 million Medicaid/CHIP enrollees since 2013 (I'm not including the 950K "bulk transferees" brought onto the program prior to October 2013, since most of those were already covered by some other state-run program).
As most people know, website owners have a variety of methods of tracking the metrics of who's visiting their site, including tools like Google Analytics and the like. Depending on which analytics solution you use, you can track not only how many people visit per hour/day/week/month, but their exact IP addresses, rough latitude/longitude, what type of operating system/web browser they use and even the resolution of the monitor they're viewing the site on.
You can also generally track how they found your site--that is, which link on which other website brought them to yours. For example, most visitors who don't load the site directly come from Twitter or via Facebook, as you'd expect, but other major traffic sources are links from the Washington Post, Slate, the MaddowBlog, Salon or other "official" news/opinion sites. Obviously whenever Paul Krugman gives me a shout-out at the NY Times, that causes a big spike. After that, it tends to be healthcare-specific sites such as healthinsurance.org, Modern Healthcare and so on, followed by other "unofficial" blogs such as Xpostfactoid, Lawyers, Guns & Money, Balloon Juice etc.
And then, every once in awhile, I'll receive traffic from...a different type of website.
Colorado is one of the few ACA exchanges issuing monthly reports during the off-season. Until now, these reports, while chock full of data, have made it rather confusing to separate out the key number which I'm looking for: The cumulative number of 2015 QHP selections and the currently effectuated QHPs, because of their tendency to mix SHOP and Dental policies into the mix.
Japanese holdouts (残留日本兵 Zanryū nipponhei?, "remaining Japanese soldiers") or stragglers were Japanese soldiers in the Pacific Theatre who, after the August 1945 surrender of Japan ending World War II, either adamantly doubted the veracity of the formal surrender due to strong dogmatic or militaristic principles, or simply were not aware of it because communications had been cut off by the United States island hopping campaign.
They continued to fight the enemy forces, and later local police, for years after the war was over. Some Japanese holdouts volunteered during the First Indochina War and Indonesian War of Independence, to free Asian colonies from Western control despite these having once been colonial ambitions of Imperial Japan during World War II.
Intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda, who was relieved of duty by his former commanding officer on Lubang Island in thePhilippines in March 1974, and Teruo Nakamura, who was stationed on Morotai Island in Indonesia and surrendered in December 1974, were the last confirmed holdouts, though rumors persisted of others.
Since the Supreme Court has ensured the viability the federally-facilitated exchanges, they could be the best option for other states with problematic marketplaces. “There is no new money now to build new infrastructure, and there are no grants available to fix these systems if they’re struggling,” said Heather Howard, the director of the Princeton University program that advises states on exchange building, told the Times. “So the only path forward may be to use HealthCare.gov.”
Did Obama Cover Up Real Reason for Obamacare Website Crash?
Nearly two years after its failed launch, there still remain more questions than answers, but perhaps the recent King v. Burwell case has subtly lifted the veil on the real reason for the crash.
Hmmmm..."subtly lifted the veil"? I'm intrigued! Do go on...
At the time of the HealthCare.gov crash, Obama’s media spin doctors insisted the site’s failure was caused by “extremely high” traffic, as Sebelius reiterated in an interview with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta. According to Sebelius, nearly 20 million people visited the site in just the first three weeks, a volume site designers simply weren’t prepared for.
Anyone over the age of 40 or so--regardless of their political stripes--should demand that, henceforth, July 12 be given the same Unofficial National Holiday status that, say, Star Wars Day has received.
