With Republicans still maintaining that Obamacare is doomed to fail, Forbes magazine reports that
enrollment may actually hit 7 million before the day ends.
While not saying that enrollment will definitely reach that mark before the deadline, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which is the agency that oversees the roll out, seem pretty optimistic. They said on Sunday that with brisk traffic on the website and call center, along with the surge in applications in the past few weeks, the projection seems promising.
In an update issued Sunday afternoon, the agency said that the website had been holding up well to the heavy traffic, handling 8.7 million visits in the last week.
In spite of the rocky beginnings for the website, which proved to be far from ready when it was launched on October 1st of last year, it now appears that the original projection of 7 million sign ups may be reached. A recent report by the CBO found that there is already a sufficient number of enrollees to make the system an actuarial viability.
Republicans are not backing away from their opposition regardless of the enrollment numbers:
While citing no evidence to support his accusations, Barrasso made all of the standard claims which have been debunked over and over again. He said that we don’t know if all of these people have been able to save any money or how many are coming off of a sub-standard plan, if they will be able to keep their doctors or if any young healthy people have enrolled.
White House senior adviser David Plouffe appeared on This Week With George Stephanopolous on ABC Sunday and presented a different view of the law.
Plouffe also noted that the 6 million already signed up do not include another 4 million who now have insurance through Medicaid expansion under the law, bringing that total to 10 million.
Fox News is also continuing to deny that the law has succeeded, claiming that not only is the federal healthcare.gov site still not working, but that the state sites are also experiencing serious problems. They listed several states that are doing especially poorly at signing people up. This appears to be just another thing Fox News lies about to sway people’s opinions, but judging by the sign up numbers, it’s not working
Massachusetts, a state which has had its own version of the law since 2006 and where 98% of the population was already covered under the requirements of Romneycare, is one of those states.
We can expect to see the denial continue from the right. They are too heavily invested in running against the law in the mid term elections in November and are unlikely to back away from that strategy. After six months of people experiencing their new coverage in action, they are probably not going to vote for the side that was pushing against it.
-Forbes Magazine
My take - two things: Obamacare has to keep rolling along gaining momentum with decent press and Obama has to be serious about ending the NSA bulk surveillence and that message has to be crystallized before college students start spilling out into the summer, that is if the president wants to right his ship. Any backtracking on curtailing the NSA in the summer because of a rise in approval numbers should be severly punished at the polls in November, I mean, the man in the Whitehouse has got to get real. Frankly he may have already done himself too much damage to gain back the support he and his party lost. That aside, I like the way things are moving.
While not saying that enrollment will definitely reach that mark before the deadline, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which is the agency that oversees the roll out, seem pretty optimistic. They said on Sunday that with brisk traffic on the website and call center, along with the surge in applications in the past few weeks, the projection seems promising.
In an update issued Sunday afternoon, the agency said that the website had been holding up well to the heavy traffic, handling 8.7 million visits in the last week.
“The site continues to perform well under the largest sustained period of
volume to date with average response times less than 400 milliseconds and an
error rate of 0.5%,” the report said.
In spite of the rocky beginnings for the website, which proved to be far from ready when it was launched on October 1st of last year, it now appears that the original projection of 7 million sign ups may be reached. A recent report by the CBO found that there is already a sufficient number of enrollees to make the system an actuarial viability.
Republicans are not backing away from their opposition regardless of the enrollment numbers:
“I don’t think it means anything,” said Senator John Barrasso, (R-WY) on Fox News Sunday. “They are cooking the books on this.”
While citing no evidence to support his accusations, Barrasso made all of the standard claims which have been debunked over and over again. He said that we don’t know if all of these people have been able to save any money or how many are coming off of a sub-standard plan, if they will be able to keep their doctors or if any young healthy people have enrolled.
White House senior adviser David Plouffe appeared on This Week With George Stephanopolous on ABC Sunday and presented a different view of the law.
“The law’s working,” Plouffe said. “This was a seminal achievement.”
Plouffe also noted that the 6 million already signed up do not include another 4 million who now have insurance through Medicaid expansion under the law, bringing that total to 10 million.
Fox News is also continuing to deny that the law has succeeded, claiming that not only is the federal healthcare.gov site still not working, but that the state sites are also experiencing serious problems. They listed several states that are doing especially poorly at signing people up. This appears to be just another thing Fox News lies about to sway people’s opinions, but judging by the sign up numbers, it’s not working
Massachusetts, a state which has had its own version of the law since 2006 and where 98% of the population was already covered under the requirements of Romneycare, is one of those states.
We can expect to see the denial continue from the right. They are too heavily invested in running against the law in the mid term elections in November and are unlikely to back away from that strategy. After six months of people experiencing their new coverage in action, they are probably not going to vote for the side that was pushing against it.
-Forbes Magazine
My take - two things: Obamacare has to keep rolling along gaining momentum with decent press and Obama has to be serious about ending the NSA bulk surveillence and that message has to be crystallized before college students start spilling out into the summer, that is if the president wants to right his ship. Any backtracking on curtailing the NSA in the summer because of a rise in approval numbers should be severly punished at the polls in November, I mean, the man in the Whitehouse has got to get real. Frankly he may have already done himself too much damage to gain back the support he and his party lost. That aside, I like the way things are moving.
No comments :
Post a Comment