One of the many, many, many predictions of Obamacare failure made by conservatives is that insurance companies would systematically drop out of the exchanges. They made this prediction many, many, many, many, many times. The data is starting to come in and, guess what, insurance companies are joining the exchanges. Dan Diamond reports that, in every state that has reported information so far, the number of insurance companies competing in the exchanges will expand in year two.
I'm quite confident that at least 90% of the original 8.02 million exchange QHP enrollees have paid their first premiums (and I'm guessing up to 80% of the 300K+ who've enrolled since then).
The latest data, as broken down by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, shows underlying Medicare growth, even after adjusting for temporary policies, is growing at just 2.5 percent. That's more than a full percentage point below economic and beneficiary growth. Medicare, in other words, is growing slower as a percent of the economy and on a per-person basis. A percentage point might not seem like a huge deal. But if the trend holds, it could translate to billions of dollars in savings for the federal government.
When faced with the niggling problem that polls show a majority of Americans oppose repealing Obamacare, some of the law's foes like to claim those polls are problematic because they offer a choice between "fixing" and "repealing" the law. This, they say, biases responses in favor of "fix," because people like fixing things, and at any rate, Obamacare can't be fixed by definition. So this new Bloomberg News poll will pose an additional problem to those who simply refuse to accept the reality that, while disapproval of the law remains high, the American people still want to stick with it.