Tuesday, January 14, 2014

By the Numbers

The Obama administration is reporting that 2.2 million people have chosen insurance plans offered through the healthcare law.

That does not include people who signed up for Medicare expansion or other elements offered by Obamacare.  That’s just who’ve been doing it through the website or the other application methods such as by phone or mail.

Administration officials also stressed that three months of enrollment remain — and, for the first time since the federal website flopped in its debut, the initial estimate of 7 million enrollees by the end of March seems at least plausible.

“These enrollment figures are encouraging for this stage in the process, especially with all the early systems problems they experienced,” Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation, told TPM. “We’re at halftime in the open enrollment period.”

About a quarter of those new enrollees are under 35, which is a little lower than hoped for, but then you know kids these days… always putting things off to the last minute.

So for all those Republicans who are planning to campaign against Obamacare and tell us that “Americans don’t want it,” good luck with that one.