President Obama and his supporters are crowing about how 7 million people have signed up for health insurance since Obamacare inched rolled out. This number sounds impressive, until one thinks about what it actually means. Writing in Firedoglake, Jon Walker tells us:
- Not all 7 million who have selected a plan on the exchange will actually get coverage because they won’t follow through with paying their premiums. Sebelius said about 80-90% of people who have signed up so far have actually paid their first premium. If we assume roughly 15% of people won’t fully complete the process the roughly 7 million signups should translates to about 6 million people actually being covered by exchange policies this year.
The Los Angeles Times, on the other hand, tells us that 8 million people have “gained coverage” since last September. For the sake of argument, let’s take the Time‘s more optimistic figure of 8 million. (It’s not clear whether all of these people were uninsured before. For the sake of argument, let’s assume they were.) According to all the sources I’ve consulted, the number of Americans without health insurance before Obamacare seeped rolled out was around 44 million. That would mean that there are still about 36 million uninsured Americans. So, even when we make the most optimistic assumptions, it is still clear that Obamacare has been a failure.
Ah, but we live in the Age of Public Relations, in which every failure can be presented as a success. So we are told, for example, that the Iraq War was a success, even though, by every objective standard, it was a failure.
Single payer is the only way to solve the health care crisis in this country.
The Spanish Prisoner 
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