Many Obamacare Shoppers Aren’t Actually Buying

Time reports:

It’s not clear how many Americans have secured new health insurance through Obamacare — the federal government won’t disclose initial figures until November. But some states have released preliminary numbers and a look at the early statistics shows that the vast majority of people who have managed to navigate the sign-up process in some states have enrolled in Medicaid, not private health plans.

The Affordable Care Act allowed states to expand eligibility for Medicaid, and about half have done so, meaning millions more Americans now qualify for the public insurance program. It’s also likely that many people who previously qualified but never signed up for Medicaid may be enrolling amid the Obamacare publicity blitz.

About 13 percent of those who’ve signed up for new coverage in Washington State, where the state-run insurance exchange appears to be operating fairly well, have enrolled in private plans; the rest were added to the Medicaid rolls. In its first week-and-a-half of operation, Connecticut’s exchange enrolled about the same number of people in Medicaid as in private health plans. And in Kentucky, more than half of all new enrollees signed up for Medicaid.


The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that some 7 million people will sign up for private health coverage through the federal and state insurance exchanges by the end of 2014 and about 9 million will be added to the Medicaid rolls during the same period.

Just a reminder: this is Time magazine, the "farm team" for the Obama regime saying this. So, things aren't going well for the Obama regime.