As 2014 dawns there are fewer people with health insurance thanks to Obamacare. Considering that the goal of Obamacare was to increase coverage even with increased costs, this is a sad state of affairs -- because costs have certainly gone up. Americans are unquestionably worse off as a group thanks to Obamacare, and only two questions remain: how bad will it get? and when will it end?
America deserves better.
The White House used a Sunday morning statement to admit that only 1.1 million people have used the federal Obamacare website to sign up for the president's healthcare network by Christmas Day.News reports and advocacy websites say roughly 1 million people have enrolled with health-benefit companies via state websites, including 400,000 in California and 157,000 in New York, by the Dec. 24 deadline, which allows coverage starting Jan. 1.
The 2 million federal and state signups are roughly two-thirds the planned goal of 3.3 million enrollments by Dec. 31. They're also only one-third of the 7 million customers sought by March 31.
The total reported signups are at least 3 million fewer than the 5 million people whose health-insurance policies were cancelled prior to Christmas by President Barack Obama's ambitious tax-and-healthcare scheme.
The minus-3-million score is only partially offset by the extension of Medicaid coverage to perhaps 2 million other people, few of whom earn enough to afford commercial insurance.
Of critical note, the administration is using a deceptive definition for the word "enrolled": it is not known how many of the "enrolled" participants have actually paid for their plans.
