It’s not quite time to freak out over Obamacare’s enrollment number

[TomCADem]

Once again, a little perspective to offer in contrast to the latest MSM right wing talking points:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/12/its-not-quite-time-to-freak-out-over-obamacares-enrollment-number/

First, we can compare the rollout to that of the Massachusetts health care law, which had 123 enrollees sign up during the first month of coverage. That ended up accounting for 0.3 percent of first-year enrollment. If we tally up 40,000 enrollees in the federal marketplace --and another 49,000 in the state exchanges, as counted by consulting firm Avalere Health --that works out to about 1.2 percent of the 7 million people the Congressional Budget Office has projected will sign up on the exchange in 2014.

Massachusetts eventually saw a really big spike in enrollment right before the individual mandate kicked in. You can see that in this chart from the New England Journal of Medicine (which Adrianna McIntyre discusses in an aptly titled post, "This chart should be getting more attention.&quot .



We can also look at Medicaid enrollment, which has outpaced some observers' expectations. There have been at least 440,000 Medicaid enrollments so far, according to Avalere. That would put Medicaid about 5 percent toward a projected enrollment of 9 million in 2014.

Is it easier to enroll people into a program such as Medicaid that does not charge premiums? Definitely. Is that program a key part of the health care law, responsible for more than half of the health law's coverage expansion? Yes. So, these high levels of Medicaid enrollment in the first few weeks do matter for the health law's insurance expansion.

[1StrongBlackMan]

1. Yeah, but …

The Massachusetts roll out didn’t have, on the one side, republicans actively working to discredit the program, and on the other, liberals willing to promote the discrediting narrative.