Private Insurance Sales Are Still Strong Under Obamacare

Congressional Republicans were gleeful after October and November failed to produce many sales of insurance under Obamacare (only 364,682 plans sold by the end of November). They were sure this was a sign that Obamacare was a failure. But it turns out that just wasn't true.

The sales were slow to begin with because of a couple of reasons -- the glitches in the computer system, and the fact that people are tentative when facing something new. But those glitches have been fixed, and people are starting to get used to using the health exchanges (both state and federal) to buy insurance -- and the sales have skyrocketed. By the end of December 2,153,421 plans had been bought through the exchanges, and by the end of January that number had risen to 3,299,492. There is no reason to believe the purchases won't continue to rise sharply over the next couple of months.

And that is just the private insurance bought. Millions more have been added to the Medicaid roles in the states that have expanded that program. This is going to make it harder and harder for the Republicans to try to repeal the program. By the time they could get a president in the White House (assuming they could do it in 2016, which I don't think they can accomplish) there are going to be so many millions of Americans at all income levels enjoying cheaper and better insurance, that it would be political suicide to even attempt to do away with Obamacare.

There is also another aspect of this that may surprise some people. Many assumed that those people now having to purchase private insurance would opt for the cheapest Bronze plan, but that is not happening. A significant majority (62%) are purchasing the better Silver plan -- probably because they find it is still very cheap (especially with government help to purchase insurance).

The Republicans have also been counting on campaigning against Obamacare in the next election, but they might have to rethink that. With every person who finds better and cheaper insurance (or gets insurance for the first time), there is one person less that will respond to a campaign against Obamacare -- and those people are growing by millions each month.