Obamacare: Time To Celebrate?

NBC's David Gregory, towing the line for Obamacare on Meet The Press.
(Courtesy: NBC).

“President Obama may be a little knicked-up after this health care fight, but he seems like he had a fairly-good week on this,” David Gregory starts off his latest in a long line of Meet The Press roundtables on Obamacare. “Republicans are tryin’, it seems their best, to say this thing isn’t gonna work,” he went on, in an oddly folksy and forceful manner, “this was a pretty good sign that it’s here to stay, this week, don’t you think?”

What “sign” was pretty good? That the White House reported, after last Monday night, that approximately 7.1 million people had enrolled for a new healthcare policy under the Affordable Care Act. As evidenced by Mr. Gregory’s sudden enthusiasm, those hanging around left-of-the-center have taken full advantage of this opportunity for a victory lap; after all, it was just ac couple weeks ago that doubts as to whether the enrollment goal, the one that was never really goal and now apparently turned back into the goal, would be met by the deadline (which, lest we forget, was delayed once or twice, depending on how you count).

Barely staving off what could’ve been (and may still be nonetheless) a politically crippling disaster aside, why not celebrate? In reality, what the White House has been celebrating was more than just meeting a goal; it was exceeding a goal by roughly a million signups. How, you ask? Well, these days reality can be whatever the White House Press Secretary and Co. want it to be, with a little help from the Washington Post Capital bureau. Just a week and a half back, the Post held up what may be the most laughable headline of the year (lucky for us, the year is still young): “Health-care enrollment hits goal of six million.” Then there’s the sub-head, which is what really made me hit the floor: “After revising its goal downward, the White House says it has surpassed its target for the first open enrollment period” (emphasis mine). Imagine that: you can be a month late and a million signups short, and still "surpass" goals (another WaPo gem), with hardly a questioned raised by the very same paper whose legacy was cemented by bringing down Nixon.

Back to our Sunday morning roundtable: John Sununu, who served New Hampshire with some distinction in the Senate for a term, brought some sense to the discussion, outlining that

“It's not about enrollment figures.  It's about reducing the number of uninsured in this country.  We have 50 million uninsured.  And if you only look at the enrollment figure, you miss the question of how many of them were previously uninsured.  So you have to multiply by about 80%, 80% will probably be the number that actually pay, gets you down to 5.6.  And how many were previously uninsured.  McKinsey Consulting did some surveys, 25% previously uninsured.  Now you're down to 1.4 million.  That's about 3%.  Reducing the number of uninsured in America by 3% for how much money?  $2 trillion.”

And then Gregory cuts him off and moves on to the more liberal Steve Case, late of AOL, but not before babbling about some “Republican argument to try to deal with the reality that people who didn't have insurance are getting insurance, or their kids are now being allowed to stay on their policies, or if you had pre-existing conditions, those are covered now.” Erm, well, sure, except not many of those people signed up, Dave.

When former Democrat Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. offered up that “The question, I think, the main question, is affordability.  We're going to cover more people.  We're going to find ways to pay for it.  But will we curb costs or curtail costs going forward?  The jury is still out there,” Gregory retorts with yet another stroke of obvious genius: “But the federal government could help defray that.  I mean you're getting-- do premiums go up?  Perhaps they will.  Perhaps the government pays some of that bill.”

That’s really what it comes down to, isn’t it? The plain fact is, the number of the previously uninsured signing up are underwhelming, and premiums are still rising post-implementation. Obamacare was sold as requiring no increase in deficit spending, on the logic that a rush of newly-insured Americans would offset the costs of insuring those with preexisting conditions. Now, since that’s not exactly happening as advertised, the default answer is the old standby, federal subsidies.

Kathleen Parker, in raising an unusually strong point, that “whether it's 7.1 million or 30 million, whatever the real numbers are…we don't know what those numbers mean,” gets at something else key: as it is, around 10-20% of all enrollees (previously uninsured or not), haven’t even paid yet, which pours cold water all over the “7.1 million signup” talking point, let alone the new wrench it throws into the whole “it pays for itself” argument.

Perhaps the White House, and Dave Gregory, should take that victory lap and bring out the bubbly now, while they still can. The administration may have staved off political embarrassment for the moment, but their luck may very well not hold out for long.

-Mitch Carter is an Illinois State Scholar and an Associate Member of the Kendall County Young Republicans.
carterscornerpr@gmail.com
Twitter @CartersCornerPR