Obamacare is (still) working: California puts the lie to right-wing horror stories

[DonViejo]

In the Golden State, the uninsured are getting covered and costs are staying low, which is bad news for GOP critics

SIMON MALOY

The Affordable Care Act suffers from a condition that afflicts all controversial legislative achievements: its failures are closely scrutinized and widely covered, while its successes go largely unnoticed. This imbalance is understandable in some ways – “Law Functions As Planned” isn’t as exciting a story as “Law Flops In Embarrassing Faceplant Hah Hah Let’s All Point And Laugh.” And so for the Affordable Care Act, the media spotlight over the years has been aimed at its hiccups and snafus: the crashing website, the conservative legal challenges, the endless repeal votes in Congress, the dire (usually unsubstantiated) warnings of skyrocketing premiums, etc. But while the glitches get all the ink, the Affordable Care Act has been racking up some significant accomplishments.

For two years now, the Kaiser Family Foundation has been tracking the experiences of a large group of California residents who were uninsured prior to the ACA’s first open enrollment period in 2013. As Kaiser’s initial report on their long-running survey explains, they chose California because it offers ideal conditions for testing the law’s efficacy:

With its ‘largest in the nation’ status that includes having the largest number of uninsured, its racial and ethnic diversity, and the state government’s full and early commitment to a smooth rollout of the ACA, California stands out as a laboratory of how the three year old law – up until now a remote political football for many Americans – will translate into real world, person-to-person changes. In all, 15 percent of the nation’s uninsured reside there, and will see the ACA through the window of the Golden State.

Kasier just released their latest update on these Golden State guinea pigs, and the findings are pretty remarkable. Nearly seventy percent of the uninsured people they began tracking in 2013 now report having health insurance, either through expanded Medicaid, their employers, or the state health insurance exchange. A full 76 percent of the newly insured are happy with their current plans and close to 80 percent are satisfied with their choice of primary care physicians. Of the population that remains uninsured, 41 percent are undocumented immigrants and are ineligible for coverage through the ACA.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/07/31/obamacare_is_still_working_california_puts_the_lie_to_right_wing_horror_stories/

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