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By Brian Hews
In a bit of bad news for Republicans, a private data analysis firm says Obamacare applications submitted to date -700,000- exceeds the comparable enrollment of the Medicare Part D prescription drug package passed in 2003.
Avalere Health found 10 percent of Part D enrollees signed up by December 2005 a month before coverage began. That is well below the 700,000 enrolled in Obamacare now and time is remaining-Nov 15 to sign up even more.
Brian, oh Brian, please stick to reporting on local politics which your paper has been doing a great job at, and leave national politics to the other guys who aren’t doing such a bang up job, but hey, it is their sandbox. Showing your colors with the “bad news for Republicans” comment just took you from journalist to “hack” commentator. I can’t remember seeing a “bad news for Democrats” in all of the articles your paper has been writing exposing all of our local corrupt ones. Plus comparing a sign up for a Medicare prescription drug benefit which only applied to a narrow Medicare eligible population is far different then the numbers for a program that is for the rest of the population. I also believe that if you investigate (God forbid!) the numbers a little closer you will probably find that many of that group have been signed up for Medicaid (or Medical in California) as opposed to the ACA. Unless my public school education has failed me once again, it appears that since the goal was to sign up 7 million in the initial push for the ACA, the 700 thousand is still just 10%. Plus with Part D, no one lost any of their coverage; they were just able to obtain additional. With the announcement of the cancellations of existing policies, I’m sure many of the new signee’s for ACA are shopping to replace their lost coverage. As I stated earlier, there are plenty of local 3rd world politics yet to be exposed, so please get back to concentrating on them.