The Nov. 16 story says, “County enrollments top 3,700.” But the data shows problems. Out of the 3,700 who signed up, 3,402 were enrolling in Medicaid, which sends no funds back to the Affordable Care Act and is subsidized; 291 of the enrollees received tax credits and are at least partially subsidized; the remaining 71 enrollees are full pay and help to subsidize the other two groups. The state data reflects the same statistics.
The Affordable Care Act is supposed to be self-supporting with enough young, healthy and wealthy people signing on to subsidize the others, but that isn’t happening yet. The Nov. 17 story, “Obama struggles to save his health law,” says that President Obama has three areas he needs to fix: “the cancellation mess, technology troubles and a crisis of confidence among his own supporters.” The cancellation mess isn’t fixable, it’s only delayed, because if the insurance companies offer less costly plans for a year, it would create a two-market health insurance market. The people would stream to the lower-cost plans, eviscerating the ACA. The technology is nothing, but the crisis of confidence came from the 36 or 39 times we were told we could keep our plans and our doctors not only from Obama’s mouth, but from those very same supporters.
Evan Wiggs
Vancouver
