It's A Stunning Success, So Stop Asking Questions!

One of the easiest ways to know when something leftists love isn't working is that you start seeing articles that declare it a success and then strongly suggest that we stop talking about it immediately. Obamacare is just such a thing. Over the past few months, HuffPo has been jammed with articles declaring victory and then declaring it a thoughtcrime to keep looking into the issue... pay no attention to the contrary data that keeps pouring in. Well, the problems keep a mountin'.

The evidence that Obamacare is failing is building up fast. Let me remind you that in June I pointed out that Obamacare had barely reduced the number of uninsured (LINK). The point I made then was this: when Obamacare was being sold, we were told that 42 million people were uninsured. Those were the people Obamacare was supposed to help. Well, then came all the Obama Administration-generated numbers which told us that as many as 35 million people had signed up for Obamacare, depending on how you counted it... and if you squinted. Well, in June we learned that 11.9% of the population remains uninsured. That works out to 38 million people. That means that Obamacare only moved five million people from the ranks of the uninsured to the ranks of the insured. The rest was smoke and mirrors. And that's a total failure.

What's more, the number of people who signed up through the exchanges remains ridiculously low. The original estimates were in the neighborhood of 10-12 million people signing up in the first year, 20 million by the second and the rest within five years. The Obama administration has dropped those numbers time and again so they could declare victory. In the latest, we were told that there would be 8ish million in the first year, then 15 million in the second and so on. Well, Obama claimed to get 8 million in the first year, but recent data released show the number was only six million. Now they're estimating there will be only ten million in this second year -- around half of what they originally claimed even after lowering expectations repeatedly. And even at that, there is no sign that ten million will sign up.

This is all very bad news for Obamacare. Not only does it make a mockery of the whole idea since it did almost nothing to help the uninsured, but it endangers the system if more suckers won't sign up. And in that regard, the data has indeed shown what we long suspected, which is that young healthy people are not signing up. That will make the finances even worse.

And it gets worse yet. One of the things that was supposed to help Obamacare was the creation of healthcare co-ops, which were supposed to provide the cheap alternatives which would force the big insurance carriers to lower their rates. Well, guess what? As of this week, eight of the 23 co-ops created have gone broke and are closing. This includes the largest, a New York coop that was supposed to be the flagship model for success. Eleven of the remaining 15 have received warnings from HHS about the way they manage their businesses and their finances. Interestingly, the co-ops are claiming that part of the problem they face is that HHS is starting to cut their subsidies.

Whoops.

This whole thing reminds me of East Germany. It started great because there was money, optimism and fear of not going along. But the whole system was so badly designed that its collapse was already obvious just beneath the surface and each year saw the problems mount until the system just ground to a halt and then fell apart.