Can someone explain to me the 20 million?

In reply to dculberson:

Whoa whoa whoa.. Boss.. that article didn't come from zerohedge. It came from daily signal, and was written by a shill for the Heritage foundation. I'm sure it's well researched journalism backed by actual facts with no agenda what so ever.

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine:

Good call. You know when an article starts with "Liberals are notorious for," it's going to be a reasoned and well researched piece.

In reply to dculberson:

Damn Straight.

It's strange to me that we are having the argument that the 20 million isn't real because it's mostly Medicaid recipients.

If you are arguing that the ACA is causing insurance prices to rise because it's putting tons of people into the exchange with preexisting conditions that wouldn't be covered previously, then how can you turn around and also argue that nobody is actually in the exchanges and that it's all new Medicaid recipients?

Those two arguments seem mutually exclusive to me.

If most of the increase in insured are Medicaid (seems legit) and that's exactly what you're eliminating in the ACA repeal, how will that exert downward pressure on healthcare prices?

Also not sure how FSAs would help these current Medicaid recipients at 100-150% of federal poverty level, considering these people don't benefit at all from tax sheltered accounts.

In reply to dculberson:

Although it did reference whining liberals, it never used the term "libtard". So seems legit to me.

In reply to bastomatic:

I am not arguing the 20 million is not real. I am asking what the 20 million means.

I do, however, think the approach is completely disingenuous. I have no problem with making insurance available AND expanding Medicaid. But then say so.

The pitch is a political one. It's like saying, "20 million more people have jobs", but including expanded welfare recipients, just because they have an income they didn't have before.

The vast majority of the added Medicaid recipients were eligible BEFORE. the ACA. The ACA didn't improve anything for them, they just signed up and got what they were already eligible for.

If the number was insignificant, it might be OK to mix them a bit. But the number is 87%. 87% of the increased "insured" are due to Medicaid expansion, which they were previously eligible for. That's not right.

In reply to SVreX:

I don't know where your numbers come from but the 87% number I've seen for most recent statistics is from the RAND corp. and that number includes all newly signed up Medicaid recipients AND anyone on the exchanges who has any cost subsidy. If you're arguing that none of these people have health care insurance/coverage then you're just arguing diction.

I know in Michigan, where I have direct access to the numbers, Medicaid enrollment is up 181,000 due to ACA. That compares with 323,000 on the exchange, the majority of whom are given some amount of subsidy.

If most who newly enrolled in Medicaid were not due to expanded access, we would see a similar rise in enrollment in states that did not expand Medicaid. That's not the case at all. In states that didn't expand Medicaid, extremely small enrollment gains were seen. I don't know how you can argue that most of the people who signed up for Medicaid were already eligible, all the numbers I've seen directly contradict this.

As a curious bystander, does anybody have any links to any of the data you're mentioning? I'd be interested in perusing some next time work gets slow.

In reply to STM317:

There's a ton of data over at Kaiser Family Foundation. There was an article back in October in NEJM that did a pretty good job of showing exactly where the gains were made amongst Medicaid and the Exchanges, though the data is a little old now.

That article used data for 2014, and said 44% of increase in coverage was for already-eligible Medicaid recipients who found signing up easier, 19% were newly elgible for Medicaid, and 39% of the increase was attributable to recipients of subsidies in the Marketplace.

In reply to bastomatic:

I'm not arguing anything at all. I asked a question. You took 5 pages before offering any data.

Thank you for the links. I will look further at them.

In reply to SVreX:

You may not intend to be arguing anything but you're making claims and mistaking using question marks for asking questions. It's pretty clear what you believe from those questions so why not stand behind it?