The latest in Obamacare news is this: The number of people who sign up for health insurance on HealthCare.gov isn’t the bottom line, according to the National Journal. Republicans have filed a subpoena, media (including us here at MedCity) have questioned, calculated, speculated and guffawed. But the numbers don’t tell the most important part of the story. What we should be watching instead of total signed up are the ratios.
The number of enrolled will (duh) be small, would have been pretty small without the glitches, and, of course, what’s more important is who signs up and where they sign up, NJ says. Remember those Young Invincibles? They’re still needed. Hopefully, they make up about 40 percent of the enrolled. Also, getting a nationally successful ratio right isn’t the goal; each state needs to have the right ratio, with the right number of healthy young people, to succeed.
Highlights from the article:
There’s one small problem with the Obamacare enrollment figures the Obama administration is under so much pressure to release: They’re nearly useless.
“All of this is very state-specific on how it plays out,” said Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Each state does still have its own insurance market and its own risk pool. Enrollees aren’t pooled with any other state, whether they run their own exchange or not.
“Everyone wants to make a snap judgment on how this is going to go, but it’s really too early to say. You can’t tell for a while, until you see insurers’ experience with 2014 enrollees,” Park said.
Click here to read the full article. It’s really worth your attention.
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