Republicans who planned their political campaigns on being against the Obama Affordable Care Act are running out of talking points. One by one, their dire predictions are proving not to come true.
The latest one that bit the dust was the claim that it would destroy the private insurance market. Not that I think that's a bad idea; I'm in favor of our going to a single-payer, Medicare-for-everyone type of program. But that was their choice to oppose it, and they were ever so wrong.
The new HHS Secretary, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, told the Brookings Institute that the number of private insurance companies offering health care plans on the ACA marketplace for 2015 will show a 25% increase to 248 companies.
The giant United Health Group is jumping in, after not being in last year. This is good, because premiums tend to be lower in markets where more companies are competing. One example is New Hampshire, which last year had only one company on the marketplace; in 2015 it will have five.
More than 10 million previously uninsured people gained coverage through the exchanges or the expansions of Medicaid and the Children's Health Program. According to an estimate by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the potential is for up to 29 million people that eventually could be covered.
And yet some want to say that President Obama has not been able to get anything done.
Ralph
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