You're quoting one study, by Goldman Sachs, which uses insurance industry data. It conflicts with most everyone else's data, and is also a year old. Which doesn't sound like much until we remember that it didn't go into effect until 2013. In 2016 alone, 9 million people signed up through healthcare.gov, Those are, by definition, people who aren't getting it through their parents, workplace or medicare.
That data is only people who have signed up for plans, not those who are actually covered. From the glossary at the bottom: The cumulative metric represents the total number of people who have submitted an application and selected a plan, net of any cancellations from a consumer or cancellations from an insurer that have occurred to date. The biweekly metric represents the net change in the number of non-cancelled plan sections over the two-week period covered by the report. To have their coverage effectuated, consumers generally need to pay their first month’s health plan premium. This release does not report the number of effectuated enrollments. NYT says one-fifth of those didn't pay in 2014. So if that continued then it's 7, instead of 9 million. And it makes sense that it would have only been 3 milion or so the first year, and gone up to 7 by now, because the penalty only went into effect for 2015's taxes. As well, just because 7 million people signed up, or even 9 if you use your number from CMS, it doesn't mean that 7 million new people were covered. It means that 7 million people used that market to get covereage. That's not to say that they didn't have another option prior to the healthcare law. Or even currently have other options but decided to use healthcare.gov When I worked for REI, I had insurance as a part-timer, but when ACA came that was not possible any longer because the insurance didn't meet the minimum requirements. Those requirements were unimportant to me and many of the people who used that insurance, but in making the changes, REI realized they would not be able to provide it at any sensible cost and cancelled the program. They encouraged us to seek out options on the exchange. When I did that, I found out how much more expsensive that would be, and decided not to carry insurance. I then changed jobs into a position with REI where I was full-time. The other people I know either went onto their spouse's insurance or to the exchange which was dramatically more expensive. But they would be counted for the numbers at healthcare.gov
And my freelance plan that we'd grandfathered into because of changes in state law was legally terminated by our insurance company so that they could charge us $800 a month instead of $300 and we didn't buy on the market either. But listen: My contractor with the three kids by two different women and the dual DUI convictions and the missing teeth has health insurance and he didn't. And so does his brother, and so does his uncle, and so does his boss. We can sling anecdata at each other all day but the bottom line is, your argument - "it seems like there are some problems that we've been talking about as if they're true, when they aren't" - is tenuous. It's a bummer for you that the ACA killed your sweetheart insurance but you found other means. It's a bummer for me that the ACA killed my sweetheart insurance but I found other means. But I run out of fingers before I finish counting the friends and acquaintances of mine who had healthcare after 2013 that didn't before and that's a success.
You're so condescending that it's hard to listen to you. But listen: People having healthcare is good. My argument is that the repeal of the ACA is being resisted under the argument that 20 million people are losing healthcare. I am arguing that this is false, and should not be repeated as it is not a true consideration of the facts, regardless of the margin of error in any of our surveys and research. I say it's 3-7 mil, you say 9. It's not 20. The measure of the success of the bill should not be a nominal counting of people with insurance, but the cost and benefit of that plan. The ACA has raised costs dramatically while making improvements that could have been made by expanding medicare, and creating a high-risk pool that would serve to cover those with pre-existing conditions at a subsidized rate without creating a government mandate to support insurance companies. The ACA and this replacement could have been written by the insurance companies themselves. They have no incentives to improve, cut costs, negotiate strongly, or benefit the customer, you're going to buy it anyway because of the way insurance laws prevent competition, and if you don't, you're going to pay a lot more when you need it. Hell, Blue Cross is a non-profit and somehow made 100 million last year while bemoaning the terrible losses that they took on ACA customers.
If you've been following Pubski at all for the past three years, you're aware that I've been building a healthcare facility with my wife, the doctor. You probably didn't know that she used to help design benefits plans, or that a good friend of ours was the benefits coordinator for Cedars Sinai, or that I spent two years designing implantable medical devices. I didn't bring it up because it isn't relevant to your argument ("20 million people aren't about to lose covereage.") I unmuted you because I thought you could be civil. Prove me right on this one, not wrong. To that argument - that 20 million people aren't about to lose coverage - you have one study. That study is an outlier, and two years old. I pointed out that Medicare's own page says something else; you observed that two years ago, not everybody paid. So you deep-dived on that number and now here you are saying 3 to 7 doesn't equal 20, and you're right. But that number also doesn't count the state exchanges: My broader point is that your argument is one that I haven't seen before - that the number of uninsured is controversial. You branched it out, I branched it out. I'm trying to be civil here. The argument you made is unsupported. It doesn't mean you have other points - it doesn't even mean I disagree with those other points. It means that one aspect of your argument is one I don't think you made.Did you know that 2.5 millilon employees work in healthcare insurance and that a single payer option would probably reduce that in a huge way, creating a massive group of unemployed people?
I'm definitely not the first one to ask the question. This article is a pretty good explanation of the problem. And there's no great answer right now. There are too many variables to credit the ACA with everyone insured now that wasn't then in any estimate. I like my source, which you dismiss, simply because it doesn't come from the Obama Administration which wrote, supported, and had to defend the Affordable Care Act. They also had a history of greatly over estimating the amount of additonal insured going back to 2011 when they said ACA would cover 32 million people. The source I chose comes from Goldman Sachs who stake their company's financial well-being on being objective and honest. And they certinaly have a bias, but when you combine that bias with the administration's is where we have to be subjective. I do find your tone to be condescending, and I don't like being spoken to like that. Maybe it's the tone of the internet, and you don't mean to do it, but you come off as very know-it-all. You basically told me to behave the way you like when you threatened to block/mute me again. If you feel like you need to block me beacuse I'm the type to address that directly, that's certainly your right.
That's just the way he always acts. Any sources that contradict his are immediately dismissed and if he can't come up with counter sources he will just hit you with anecdotal evidence that you can't address. Somewhere in the middle there will be a threat of muting and usually the last post or 2 are thinly veiled personal attacks. The guy has an encyclopedia worth of knowledge so it's interesting to read his posts but I've found that it's not worth the emotional effort to engage with him since the discussion always gets uncivil.I do find your tone to be condescending, and I don't like being spoken to like that. Maybe it's the tone of the internet, and you don't mean to do it, but you come off as very know-it-all. You basically told me to behave the way you like when you threatened to block/mute me again. If you feel like you need to block me beacuse I'm the type to address that directly, that's certainly your right.