Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Obamacare Observations From the Marketplace

A few observations from my travels and conversations in the marketplace:

About half of the enrollments are coming from people who were previously insured and half are not. When I try to gauge this, I go to carriers who had high market share before Obamacare and have maintained that through the first open enrollment. Some carriers have said only a small percentage of their enrollments had

Monday, April 14, 2014

Virginia Should Take the Obamacare Medicaid Expansion Money and So Should All Republican States

In a September 2012 post on this blog, I said that Republican governors should be expanding their Medicaid programs under Obamacare. I argued that Republicans have long called for state block grants and the flexibility to run their own Medicaid programs in what are the state "laboratories of democracy."

I made the point that, given the then recent Supreme Court decision enabling states to opt

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Mission Accomplished?––7.1 Million––Will the Obama Administration Come To Regret Today's Obamacare Enrollment Announcement?

Politics is about expectations.

The Obama administration blew the doors off Obamacare's enrollment expectations this week and scored big political points.

But in doing so, they may have set Obamacare's expectations going forward at a level that can only undermine their credibility and that of the new health law.

What happens when the real number––the number of people who actually completed