Obama: Haul for health law hits 8 million

Younger sign-ups surged, repeal bids futile, he says

President Barack Obama called on GOP leaders to stop “endless, fruitless” attempts to repeal the new health-care law.
President Barack Obama called on GOP leaders to stop “endless, fruitless” attempts to repeal the new health-care law.

WASHINGTON - Eight million people signed up for insurance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the law’s first year, President Barack Obama said Thursday, declaring that Republicans should stop trying to repeal the measure and work to improve it instead.

“This thing is working,” Obama said at a White House news conference. “The Affordable Care Act is covering more people at less cost than most people would have predicted a few months ago.”

About 35 percent of enrollees in the federal insurance exchanges are younger than 35, Obama said. That’s a 4 percentage-point rise since March 1, indicating a surge of sign-ups by young adults and children. Insurers want as many healthy customers as possible to balance the risk and expense of covering older and sicker Americans.

Obama announced the numbers two days after enrollment closed for the year under the health-care law. The administration had extended the sign-up period by two weeks until Tuesday to accommodate late applicants.

The sign-up totals exceed an estimate of 7 million from the Congressional Budget Office before the exchange was crippled for two months by computer errors.

The budget office scaled back its projection to 6 million in February.

The country must “move on” from the “endless, fruitless” attempts by Republicans to repeal the law, Obama said. “They still can’t bring themselves to admit that the Affordable Care Act is working.”

“We now know for a fact that repealing the Affordable Care Act would increase the deficit, raise premiums for millions of Americans and take away insurance from millions more,” Obama said.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader who is seeking to take control of the Senate after the November congressional elections, immediately reiterated his party’s intent to repeal the law.

“Countless Americans have unexpectedly been forced out of the plans they had and liked, are now shouldering dramatically higher premiums, and can no longer use the doctors and hospitals they choose,” he said in an email from a spokesman.

While Republicans who control the House of Representatives have voted 50 times since 2011 to repeal all or part of the health-care law, they have never voted on alternative legislation to expand U.S. insurance coverage.

Obama said he would welcome discussion with Republicans on “things that need to be improved, that need to be tweaked.”

Republicans, though, are “going through the stages of grief,” he said. “We’re not at acceptance yet.”

Obama concluded his remarks by criticizing states that have refused to expand their Medicaid programs under the health law because of “ideological reasons.”

“You’ve got 5 million people who could be having health insurance right now at no cost to these states, zero cost to these states,” Obama said, holding up his fingers in the shape of a zero.

“That’s wrong. It should stop.”

While the federal government provides full financing for the Medicaid expansion until 2017, Republican governors who have declined the money say their states wouldn’t be able to afford their share of the cost in later years, a maximum of 10 percent.

Arkansas expanded its Medicaid program.

According to the state Insurance Department, 41,402 Arkansans who did not qualify for Medicaid had enrolled in plans on the state’s insurance exchange through April 6 - less than half of the enrollment total of 115,925 for 2014 that consultants projected to the Insurance Department in 2011.

Among those who qualified for coverage under the state’s expanded Medicaid program, however, officials said the pace of enrollment has exceeded expectations.

As of March 21, 106,324 Arkansans who qualified for Medicaid were enrolled in plans on the exchange under the so-called private option created by the Legislature, and thousands of others had been approved for coverage but had not yet completed enrollment.

An additional 14,969 newly eligible Arkansans were assigned to the traditional fee-for-service Medicaid program because of their exceptional health needs. The expansion of the Medicaid program extended eligibility to an estimated 250,000 Arkansans - adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level.

Earlier on Thursday, Obama met with state insurance commissioners and executives from companies including WellPoint Inc. and HealthNet Inc. to discuss preparations for 2015 signups, which begin Nov. 15.The increase in under-35 enrollment was reported by the commissioners after they met with Obama and aides who included outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

The rise in the percentage of younger enrollees may help stave off large premium increases in 2015, said Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation of Menlo Park, Calif.

But North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm, a Republican, cautioned that higher youthful enrollment doesn’t guarantee insurers won’t try to raise rates.

“If it’s folks under the age of 35 who are still sick or are incurring a lot of claims, that’s going to add to the mix in terms of what the rates need to be for those products,” Hamm said.

“The more important demographic is what’s the health of folks enrolling in these products.”

In addition to the demographic composition of the people who buy insurance, critics of the health law say the number of those who were previously uninsured is important, since many could simply have been moved from plans that were canceled by the law.

White House officials did not say how many of the 8 million people were switching from insurance they had before.

Officials have promised to release that information when they have it, but have said it is not data that is collected by the government.

Administration officials also have not said how many people have actually completed their enrollment by making their first premium payments.

Obama brushed aside those concerns Thursday.

“All told, millions of Americans who were uninsured have gained coverage,” Obama said. “We’ve got a sizable part of the U.S. population, for the first time, that are in a position to enjoy the financial security of health insurance.”

Information for this article was contributed by Mike Dorning, Alex Wayne and Roger Runningen of Bloomberg News; by Mark Landler of The New York Times; and by Andy Davis of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/18/2014

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