The Irony of Obamacare?

All those doomsday scenarios that Republicans spun about the Affordable Care Act have one thing in common: None of them has happened.

We haven’t seen a huge increase in insurance premiums; most Americans are now getting their health coverage more cheaply. We haven’t seen a big increase in the uninsured, either — as House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) claimed would happen because so many people were going to lose their insurance.

In fact, it’s been quite the opposite: Nationwide, 9.5 million people are now insured who weren’t before, according to a recent study by the Commonwealth Fund. And polls show they are pretty happy about it.

No one is saying this law is perfect. There will still be people without insurance. Some of the biggest losers live in states that have so far refused federal money to expand Medicaid. But Boehner’s prediction of a net loss of the insured was just one of a number of wild exaggerations from Republicans about what was going to go wrong under Obama*care.

We aren’t hearing as loud a protest from them anymore because the data have been so positive. It’s hard for Republicans to refute. Despite their best efforts to discourage twenty-somethings from signing up on the marketplace, the largest drop so far has been in the number of uninsured young adults. And in states where governors agreed to expand Medicaid, the uninsured rate for people in poverty has also fallen sharply.

New Jersey is one of those states, despite Gov. Chris Christie’s initial resistance to the Medicaid expansion. Ironically, the parts of this state that had the staunchest opponents of the Affordable Care Act are now benefiting the most from major provisions of the law, says Raymond Castro, a senior analyst with New Jersey Policy Perspective. The biggest increases in the percentage of New Jersey residents enrolling in the Medicaid expansion have been in Hunterdon, Sussex and Morris counties — districts where Republican congressmen voted against the law.

So far, there’s been a 38 percent drop overall in the proportion of uninsured New Jerseyans — perhaps the best indicator of how incredibly effective this law has been. The state’s rate hasn’t been this low since 1990; and this improvement all happened within just a few months.

New Jersey is also benefiting more from Obama*care than most other states because we had more uninsured people to begin with — the 10th-highest number in the nation. We get larger subsidies than other states because our cost of living is higher, so expect a big economic impact, too.

Our state is already receiving more than $1 billion in federal subsidies annually that are being used to pay for medical care, which is expected to spur the creation of thousands of jobs. By one early estimate, New Jersey will gain 14,000 jobs by 2016, just from the Medicaid expansion alone.

New Jersey is also seeing significant savings from the expansion because the federal government’s matching rate covers expenses that our state was footing before. State taxpayers will save $400 million every year on Medicaid for the next three years, which the governor has included in his latest budget. Costs have also dropped in a state-funded prescription assistance program because of improvements in Medicare coverage, meaning more dollars saved.

And many patients will now have more health choices. New Jersey was always notorious for having one of the lowest rates of reimbursement to primary care physicians from Medicaid. But under the Affordable Care Act, these rates were doubled for two years, so doctors should be more willing to participate in the program. And because more insurers are participating in the marketplace and Medicaid, New Jerseyans will have more options for insurance plans, too.

It was a lot easier to talk about repealing Obama*care when no one actually had insurance through the law. Now, getting rid of it would mean that hundreds of thousands of people lose their coverage, many in the middle of essential medical treatment.

How are Republicans going to spin that?

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whatdidyousay! said:

I am paying twice as much in my co pay to see a DR. now thanks to ObamaDoesnotcare .






Are you an inpatient or an outpatient? | Medicare.gov



If you're on Medicare you should know this.

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whatdidyousay! said:

I am paying twice as much in my co pay to see a DR. now thanks to ObamaDoesnotcare .

Are you an inpatient or an outpatient? | Medicare.gov

If you're on Medicare you should know this.

Click to expand...

seb said:

Probably not so much because of Obama Care, but the fact that Medicare is going broke.

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