Why Next Week's Obamacare Enrollment Numbers May Not Be Very Useful

This assumes we will in fact get those numbers next week, which I personally doubt. This Administration is All In on Just Lying About Everything and Concealing Anything That's Left.

But if we do get some numbers....

The administration’s goal is to enroll about 7 million people in the first year, and about 40 percent of those enrollees need to be young, healthy consumers. Bringing young people into the system is critical to keeping premiums low and avoiding an insurance “death spiral.”

Hitting that mix across 7 million Americans isn’t good enough, though. Each state has to get the right ratio in its own insurance market.

“All of this is very state-specific on how it plays out,” said Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Interesting point (sent along by Monty): It's not just about having a total number of young and healthy enrollees to balance out the aged and sick; but each state must have its own proper balance, because each pool of risk is limited to that state.

So having, say, lots of young healthy enrollees in... I have no idea which state will have lots of young healthy enrollees clamoring to pay too much for insurance they don't need, but if Madeupiana has an excess of such enrollees, that doesn't help Missouri.

Now, Hot Air has this story that half of all of Illinois' enrollees signed for Medicaid may not even be eligible for Medicaid, which means they should have been put into the exchanges, but right now are being kept out of them. Correction: Article refers to prior enrollees; see below.

That kind of Obungle incompetence could have a bad effect on the already doomed system. Suppose young and healthy people, crucial to the exchanges, are being erroneously signed up for Medicaid -- thus Obungle is further reducing the number of young, healthy insurance buyers he so desperately needs.

Thanks to Monty, again, who is @AOSHQDOOM on Twitter, and apparently is signed up for Google's Bad Vibes News Alerts.

Update: I completely forgot about this exact thing, being wrongly signed up for Medicaid, happening to our own Niedermeyer's Dead Horse.

Correction: Theresa in Fort Worth did something I didn't -- she read that Medicaid article I linked.

Actually, I read that article a couple of days ago - they aren't referring to ANY new Medicaid enrollees; they are referring to years and years of fraud and waste.

In other words, people who have been on the Medicaid rolls for years who shouldn't be.

The Obamacare enrollees haven't even made it to the trough yet.

Apologies.

posted by Ace at 03:04 PM

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