Politico Gives Obamacare Enrollment 'A-' Grade
by Warner Todd Huston 30 Mar 2014
Politico has awarded Obamacare a grade of "A-" for
its first enrollment season, lauding the law for almost reaching its signup
goal. However, despite Politico's happy face on the Affordable Care Act, the
public's support for the law is at an all-time low.
On March 28 Politico author David
Nather made to grade several areas of the implementation of the Affordable Care
Act, or ACA (also known as Obamacare), and found that, despite its monumental
failures, it was mostly praiseworthy.
This praise from Politico is in
sharp contrast to public support of the ACA which is now at an all-time low. A
new poll by the AP and GfK polling shows that public support for Obamacare has
plummeted to 26 percent favorable.
Obamacare was even ridiculed by
several floats during New Orleans Mardi Gras parades.
Among other categories, Nather
gave Obamacare an "A-" for its success at public enrollment. By his
own admission, Obama originally said he needed seven million enrollees – and
didn't get them, claiming six million on Thursday of this week. He also said he
needed 38 percent of enrollees to be young people so that the system wouldn't
financially collapse – and didn't get them. Politico does not worry about any
of that.
Worse, Nather glosses over the
fact that this six-million signup claim may be utterly meaningless because
there is no indication that all six million actually took possession of and
paid for their first insurance policy premium. So, the six million claim is
more like six million saying they intend to get insurance, not six million
actually getting insurance.
By one estimate, up to 30 percent
of those who claimed to have "signed up" for Obamacare on the ACA
website never actually paid their premiums or got any insurance at all. Nather
quotes a more conservative 15-20 percent, which could still lower the number of
actual enrollees below five million – and thus less than 70 percent of the
original seven million enrollment goal. Still, that shortfall deserves an
"A-," because the numbers "could also tick up during the rest of
the year," Nather reasons.
There are other reasons to believe
that this claimed number of signups is false, too.
The President sold Obamacare in
2009 by scolding America
because 40 million Americans had no insurance. Yet now he's excited that he
signed up a mere six million for insurance? That seems to be quite a failure,
if 40 million needed to be served, and he only served six million.
It gets worse when we realize that
most of this six million did have insurance before Obamacare and lost it
because of Obamacare.
Politico ignored many of these
facts and merely took Obama's claims at face value to give him a happy "A
minus" grade for enrollment.
The news site also graded several
other areas of the rollout of Obamacare. It gave the ACA's "mix of
customers" a "B" even though, as noted above, Obamacare did not
get the number of young people it needs to stay financially viable. Showing his
desperation for the young age group to signup, in the last two weeks Obama made
a major push to get those under 40 to sign up. It doesn't seem to have worked.
There were two areas where
Politico gave Obamacare an "F," and deservedly so. First was over
website readiness. Certainly, the debut of the Obamacare website was a crashing
failure and still is in many ways. However, Politico gave "website
repairs" a "B-" despite that the back end of the system is still
not giving insurance companies useful information.
Second, Obamacare got an
"F" for Obama's lie of the year: "You can keep your healthcare
policy if you like it."
For the most part, though, Nather
gave Obamacare glowing grades despite all its massive failures, many of which
continue to this day.
Of course, this isn't the first
time that Politico put a happy face on the massive failure that is Obamacare.
In February, the outlet proclaimed the ACA a success despite its crashing
failures.
Politico
John
F. Harris is the editor in chief for Politico, and a
trustee at the German Marshall Fund of
the United States
(think tank).
Note: Karen Donfried was
the EVP for German
Marshall Fund of the United
States (think tank), and is the senior director for European affairs at
the National Security Council for
the Barack Obama administration.
Michael B.G.
Froman was a fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (think tank), an assistant to the president for the Barack Obama administration, and is Barack Obama’s law school friend.
Gregory
B. Craig is a trustee at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (think tank), and was the White House counsel for the Barack Obama administration.
Robert G.
Liberatore was a fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (think tank), and a trustee at the Committee
for Economic Development.
George
Soros was the chairman for the Foundation
to Promote Open Society.
Donna
S. Morea was a trustee at the Committee
for Economic Development, and the EVP for the CGI Group Inc.
CGI Group Inc.
was the Obamacare contractor that
developed Healthcare.gov web site.
Obamacare
is Barack Obama’s signature policy
initiative.
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