Defenders of President Obama’s signature health reform legislation claim the states that put effort into establishing their own exchanges, mostly Democrat-led, are signing people up successfully for ObamaCare. A new report, however, indicates that most of the individuals signing up in these state-run exchanges are enrolling into Medicaid.
Rachana Dixit at InsideHealthPolicy wrote Tuesday that enrollment into Medicaid in many of the state-run exchanges is “significantly outpacing the number of people that so far have enrolled into qualified health plans.” Medicaid enrollment numbers, Dixit observed, have reached tens of thousands in states such as Maryland, Washington, and Oregon.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had projected that seven million people would enroll in the ObamaCare exchanges in 2014 while eight million would enroll in Medicaid. If Health and Human Services (HHS) hopes to get seven million enrolled by the end of March, about a third of them need to be healthy, young enrollees who will foot the bill for the higher risk patients who will need more health care services.
Dixit wrote that, in light of the significant problems the ObamaCare rollout has experienced, consultants tracking the exchanges are now wondering whether enough young and healthy enrollees will actually sign up to make ObamaCare work.
For example, Maryland’s state-run exchange - Maryland Health Connection - states 82,473 residents as of September had enrolled in Medicaid for coverage beginning January 1st, yet, between October 1st and 17th, there were 2,393 enrollments into the qualified health insurance plans.
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