Obamacare May Be Failing the Uninsured
At the outset, Obamacare was created to expand health coverage to the 13 percent of eligible Americans—roughly 38 million—who are uninsured.
A new survey, however, found that the majority of people signing up for coverage already had health insurance.
Consulting firm McKinsey and Co. found that just 27 percent of the 4 million Obamacare enrollees were previously uninsured.
While the number of previously
uninsured enrollees is low, the survey does not include those who are
now eligible for Medicaid. So the number is likely larger since under
the expanded Medicaid program the Obama administration estimates that
about 9 million people have been deemed eligible.
The private consulting firm is
the first to offer an answer to one of the biggest mysteries surrounding
the Obamacare rollout: Is it actually helping to expand coverage to the
uninsured? The administration has not been tracking this information,
though it’s a key metric in determining whether the law is meeting its
goals.
“That's not a data point we are
really collecting in any sort of systematic way,” Gary Cohen, a top
official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), told
an audience at a health policy conference in Washington on Thursday.
The administration has so far
provided numbers only for people who have selected plans on the health
exchanges. The figures don’t include how many uninsured have received
coverage. They also don’t include an estimate of how many enrollees have
paid for their policies – a crucial piece of information to assess how the risk pools are actually shaping up.
The McKinsey survey found that
about 75 percent of enrollees have paid their premiums. That’s similar
to previous estimates from insurers who have said about 20 percent have
not paid.
In response to the new survey,
CMS officials said they’re ramping up their outreach efforts –
especially to uninsured individuals – in the final weeks of the open
enrollment period, which ends March 31.
“We are seeing increased interest
in marketplace plans across the country as we enter the final weeks of
open enrollment,” said CMS in a statement. “Outreach is occurring in
every state with a particular emphasis on areas with the highest
population of the uninsured using a mix of grassroots activities and
advertising.”
The president himself has been reaching out to the Hispanic community to sign up for health insurance ahead of the deadline, since Hispanics represent 25 percent of the 38 million eligible uninsured. Nearly all of the issues with the Spanish-language exchange websites have been fixed, Obama has said – and he warned that if people waited too long, the system could crash at the end of the month.
The Kaiser Family Foundation
has found that awareness of the new law among the uninsured remains
particularly low. Some 76 percent of Americans without coverage said
they still didn’t know the deadline to sign up for coverage. Moreover,
just 12 percent of uninsured respondents said they knew “a lot” about
Obamacare, while 24 percent knew “some” information about the law, 36
percent knew “a little,” and 26 percent knew “nothing at all.”
Other studies have found that people at/or below the poverty line without insurance were less likely to know about the law than others.
