The law seems to have effectively boosted insurance rates insurance coverage. Arit John explains:
The number of uninsured Americans fell 8 percent during the first three months of 2014, thanks to 3.8 million uninsured individuals gaining insurance, according to the Center for Disease Control. Put another way, the uninsured rate dropped from 20.4 percent to 18.4 percent among adults ages 18-64. This marks the first government study on health insurance after insurance through the health care law kicked in on January 1 and, as The New York Times notes, the numbers match up with previous independent surveys.
The important thing to note is that this survey is only through the end of March, meaning it doesn’t account for the surge of procrastinators who took advantage of the two week special enrollment period in early April.
Jonathan Cohn is pleased:
Critics will say that the number, though significant, falls short of expectations. And it’s true: The Congressional Budget Office and other experts had predicted the Affordable Care Act would reduce the number of uninsured in 2014 by several million more, in addition to the young people who already got insurance. But, as Sabrina Tavernise explains at the New York Times, the timing means this set of NHIS data didn’t capture most of the late enrollment surge that basically doubled enrollment in the Obamacare exchanges. As Harvard economist Katherine Baicker told Tavernise, the NHIS results sound “reasonably consistent with what had been expected,” given what private surveys like those from Gallup and the Urban Institute have already shown.
Meanwhile, Sarah Kliff argues the CDC data “reflects the importance of a totally different health insurance expansion”:
The Children’s Health Insurance Program was created in 1997 to offer insurance coverage to low income children. By early 1999, nearly all states had opted into the program (and all 50 participate today). That program has, over the past 17 years, cut the uninsured rate of children in half. The uninsured rate for kids has fallen from 13.9 percent in 1997 to 6.6 percent today, a huge decline that pretty much all traces back to the CHIP program expanding coverage.
But as Jason Millman notes, the CDC’s figures are far from the final word:
The new surveys Tuesday also come out a day after the Obama administration announced that 115,000 immigrants who purchased insurance through federal exchanges will lose their coverage by the end of this month for failing to provide documentation of their citizenship or immigration status. Another 360,000 customers risk losing part or all of their premium subsidies after September if they don’t provide updated income information to the federal government. Monday’s news is reminder that the coverage landscape in 2014 is still changing.
Suderman has more along those lines:
It’s possible that many have already lost their subsidies. The CMS memo notes how many cases have been closed, and how many are being resolved. But it doesn’t provide any information at all about how those cases were resolved. That’s a departure from when the discrepancies were first revealed in June. At the time, as CBS News reported, federal health officials stressed that consumers were coming out ahead in the “vast majority” of resolved cases. It seems probable some portion of the resolutions since, and perhaps even a significant fraction, were resolved with the subsidies being taken away.
The Dish 