Number of People Who Have Signed Up For Private Insurance in Oregon: Zero

Sarah Kliff trumpeted Oregon's "success" yesterday. The state had signed up 56,000 people for Medicaid, due to ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion.

Today, the actual Miss Local Crime Story reports on a number the Administration isn't as excited to trumpet: The number of people enrolled in private insurance, through the market place, is zero.

Wait, did you say zero?

I guess you did. Thank you, Dean Vernon Wormer.

Cover Oregon -- Oregon's version of the exchanges -- realized they had too many errors in their website to process applications that way, and so began manual processing.

Their spokeswoman, whose salary is paid for by Oregon taxpayers, refuses to divulge the number of people who have applied in this way. Just because, peasant.

However, Fauver said that no Oregon health plan has received an enrollment through the marketplace. She declined to comment on the number of applications submitted to the marketplace, saying her department is "still working through the data to to arrive at a number we can stand by." It's possible that some of the applications could be incomplete, or represent multiple people. Cover Oregon doesn't know because they're still pending manual processing.

Also via the Morning Jolt, Connecticut is similarly signing up a few people for Medicaid (through ObamaCare's expansion), giving a subsidy to a few people, and signing up fewer people who will receive no subsidy. So Those Who Subsidize are fewer in number than Those Who Will Be Subsidized.

Of the 3,847 individuals who signed up for coverage, 1,857 qualified for Medicaid, 1,897 signed up for plans with one of the three private insurance carriers, and 93 qualified for the Children’s Health Insurance Plan. Of the individuals who signed up with private carriers, 772 won’t receive a subsidy and 1,125 will receive a federal subsidy to lower their monthly premium.

To be honest with you, I cannot parse if these are "good numbers" as far as the death spiral or "bad numbers." But it does look like the people paying for other people is relatively low, so guess is that their premiums will be pretty high. And if the rate of purchase of insurance on the markets by those not getting a subsidy remains low, their rates will go higher, and then fewer will join, and the rates will go higher still, and so on.

But I don't know that. I'm just looking at the numbers and guessing at them.

Thanks to @benk84 and, again, the Morning Jolt.

posted by Ace at 02:56 PM

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