One of the straws being grasped at by the Republicans to prove that Obamacare is a failure is that while 8 million people may have signed up for it, they haven’t paid for it.
Most of the people choosing health plans under the Affordable Care Act — about 80 percent — are paying their initial premiums as required for coverage to take effect, several large insurers said Tuesday on the eve of a House hearing about the law.
[…]
In testimony prepared for a hearing of a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday, Mr. Pratt said, “Health insurers have been doing everything possible to encourage exchange enrollees to pay their premiums.”
Paul Wingle, the executive director of exchange operations and strategy at Aetna, said: “As of the third week of April, Aetna had over 600,000 members who had enrolled and roughly 500,000 members who had paid. For those who had reached their payment due date, the payment rate, though dynamic, has been in the low- to mid-80 percent range.”
That means if 8 million people have signed up — and allowing for duplicates — the numbers are still impressive: 6 million have paid their initial premium.
Next meme, please.
And I read somewhere, a lot of people haven’t even received their first premium notice yet. Therefore, they haven’t paid. How can RWs be so gawddamn dumb? (rhet. quest.)