Kathleen Sebelius annouced today the approximate count of people getting covered or expected to get coverage through exchanges/medicaid. The big winners are people getting Medicaid and the big losers..........everyone else. During the first month there were approximately 107,000 people who were able to log into the exchanges (Federal and State) and actually sign up for a plan. This is far, far, far below the estimates as one would imagine. However, there were approximately 390,000 that were deemed eligible for medicaid or some other government funded plans. The problem that one would immediately see is that Medicaid has no income, meaning it is, for the most part, funded by the government (taxpayers) with no or little cost to the recipient. If the administration was hoping that people paying into the system were going to help offset this, we may have a problem if the trend continues.
Additionally, hopefully the administration will pull-back on not allowing people to keep their current health plan. More than 11 Million people who purchased individual plans would be forced from their plan to purchase reform coverage. This is not exactly what our President said we would be able to do.
To be continued..................
