Single payer works. RT @ezraklein: In first month, the vast majority of Obamacare sign-ups are in Medicaid http://t.co/1jONGcsh1z
— billmonster (@billmon1) November 1, 2013
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The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza asks an actual expert:
While President Obama was in Boston on Wednesday to deliver a speech at Faneuil Hall, he was also scheduled to attend a private meeting with friends and supporters. One of the well-wishers in attendance was Jonathan Gruber, an M.I.T. economist and an architect of both Mitt Romney’s health-care plan in Massachusetts and Obama’s Affordable Care Act…
Gruber’s view is that, at the moment, the technical problems associated with healthcare.gov are only a “DefCon 4 problem”—mostly just a political headache for the White House. (Five is the lowest level of alarm on the U.S. military’s defense-readiness-condition scale; one is the highest.) In her testimony before a House committee on Wednesday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius promised that the exchanges would be fully functional by November 30th. If she’s right, then this episode may be a mere speed bump, and one that will soon be forgotten, the same way that early problems implementing Romneycare were….
Gruber further estimates that 80% of Americans will be “more or less left alone”, 14% will be “clear winners: they are currently uninsured and will have access to an affordable insurance policy”, and even half of the remaining 6% currently buying their own policies “will have little change to their policies”..
It’s that final 3% — people who “will have to buy a new product that complies with the A.C.A.’s more stringent requirements” — that’s given the media (and the GOP) a short-lived chance to try and discredit the whole program.
Read the whole thing (it’s not long) for more details.