Yesterday I tore apart a rather idiotic story by Sharyl Attkisson at the Daily Signal in which she bullshits her way through various ACA numbers, culminating in a completely absurd "infographic" which I helpfully corrected for her (so far she has yet to thank me for the assist).
Today I see that Hannah Bleau of the Daily Caller picks up Attkisson's ball o' crap and runs with it. I really don't have time to do another takedown today, so instead I'll just present two screen shots.
The first is the headline itself:
Um...no, Ms. Bleau, there has been no survey released which has made any such claim whatsoever. The Kaiser Family Foundation survey you're referring to states that 57% of the people who enrolled in QHPs via the ACA exchanges were previously uninsured. That is, 57% of the 8.02 million people who enrolled via the exchanges, or around 4.6 million (or, if you subtract those who haven't paid their first premiums yet, around 4.1 million).
There's a TON of amazing news out of Oregon today, but I only had room for the most stunning one in the title above. Trust me, this is chock full 'o goodness:
For all the hits Oregon has taken over their website, they continue to calmly, quietly, manually add more and more people to their exchange rolls:
Medical enrollments through Cover Oregon: 315,825
Total private medical insurance enrollments through Cover Oregon 1: 89,744
Oregon Health Plan enrollments through Cover Oregon: 226,081
Net private medical: 81,369
Net private dental: 15,461
This is a net increase of another 1,029 QHPs and another 14,151 Medicaid enrollees since June 12...or up 21,436 QHPs since the end of Open Enrollment on 4/19 (330 per day on average).
It's worth remembering that Oregon started the year with only about 559,000 uninsured people in the entire state. Add in the 128,434 "Fast Track" Medicaid enrollees and you have a whopping 444,000 people covered one way or the other.
A second nice DC find today by contributor deaconblues; as he put it, "so much for the triple-digit increases predicted by the Republicans"...
The D.C. Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking received proposed health insurance plan rates to sell on the District of Columbia’s health insurance marketplace, DC Health Link, for plan year 2015.
Four major insurance companies – Aetna, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, Kaiser Permanente and UnitedHealthcare – have proposed rates for individuals, families and small businesses.
UnitedHealthcare proposed rate decreases of eight percent for all of their 2015 plans; Aetna and Kaiser Permanente proposed a mix of rate increases and decreases resulting in a slight overall net decrease for Aetna and a slight overall net increase for Kaiser; and CareFirst proposed rate increases for all plans. Most of the individual plans and all small business or “SHOP” plans reflect increases greater than 10 percent.
While that last item about CareFirst raising rates over 10% puts a damper on the good news, it may not be final:
Seriously, don't ACA opponents ever get tired of being wrong about...everything?
Hot off the presses...
PRINCETON, NJ -- Five percent of Americans report being newly insured in 2014. More than half of that group, or 2.8% of the total U.S. population, say they got their new insurance through the health exchanges that were open through mid-April.
These data are based on Gallup Daily tracking interviews with more than 31,000 adults conducted between April 15 and June 17. Those who say they have health insurance were asked if their policy was new for 2014, and if so, whether they obtained their policy through a state or federal health exchange or in some other way. The exchanges officially closed on March 31, although people who indicated they had begun the process prior to that date were allowed to continue to enroll through April 15.
So, let's see here. The Gallup poll only includes adults over 18, so...
Slowly but surely, Michigan looks like it may end up achieving 100% expansion enrollment by the end of the first year, an amazing accomplishment (especially considering that the GOP state legislature delayed the program by 3 months for absolutely no reason whatsoever, financial or otherwise):
Healthy Michigan Plan Enrollment Statistics
Beneficiaries with Healthy Michigan Plan Coverage: 307,143
(Includes beneficiaries enrolled in health plans and beneficiaries not required to enroll in a health plan.)
*Statistics as of June 23, 2014
*Updated every Monday at 3 p.m.
For the most part, it lays out the major anti-ACA talking points (No One is Signing Up; the Policies are Too Expensive; But How Many Were Previously Uninsured?, There Won't Be Enough Competition, etc.), followed by the reality which has sliced through each of them, one by one like Toad's "List of Things to Do Today". To be perfectly honest, I was a bit surprised that he didn't bother including the chestnuts which have been disproven in the most spectacular fashion: The "But How Many Have PAID???" and "OMG!! 5MM Policies Cancelled!!" memes. Anyway, it's a good piece, and he concludes it as follows:
Good for him. Not only is this the right thing to do, assuming it goes through (it sounds like the logistics will be a bit awkward to implement under the circumstances), it also makes the Virginia Republican Party look like even bigger jackasses than they already did (and don't even get me started on the former Democratic state Senator who agreed to their bribery scheme).
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) said on Friday that he planned to act administratively to expand health coverage in his state, defying the Republican-controlled legislature that maneuvered to block him from expanding Medicaid under Obamacare.
The specifics of McAuliffe's plan aren't clear. But he vetoed an item in the Virginia budget Friday that would have required the legislature to approve any expansion and asserted that he planned to "move administratively" to expand coverage to as many as 400,000 low-income Virginians.