Jason Millman:
New surveys out Wednesday morning provide a glimpse into just how many Americans have gained insurance since the Obamacare health insurance marketplaces opened in October.
First, Gallup reports that states which fully embraced the law by setting up their own exchanges and expanding their Medicaid programs saw their uninsured rate drop this year three times faster than the states that didn’t...
Meanwhile, the Urban Institute has further details on its finding that the number of uninsured nonelderly adults fell by 5.4 million people between September and early March. Urban finds that states that expanded their Medicaid programs saw their uninsured rate drop 4 percent, while states that didn't expand saw a much slower drop at 1.5 percent. The expansion states also did a better job of covering young adults and especially Hispanics — demographics targeted by supporters of the health-care law.
I understand that this isn't "proof" ACA will ultimately succeed, but the data suggests it's working as intended so far. But/and it's not unfair to suggest the GOP's problem with Obamacare isn't how well it works, it's what it does.
Jonathan Cohn:
We have some new information about Obamacare’s impact. It’s encouraging, although you should treat it the same way you should treat all of the early information: With plenty of caution.
The data comes from Gallup, the polling firm that has provided the most thorough tracking of the law’s reach so far. On Wednesday afternoon, the organization released a new set of findings. Most important among them? According to Gallup, about 4 percent of American adults report that they are newly insured as of this spring. That’s at least in the same ballpark of what the Congressional Budget Office expected to see this year. (It's hard to be more precise, because two are counting in different ways and over different time spans.) It’s also consistent with previous Gallup findings.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Gallup:
Overall, 11.8% of U.S. adults say they got a new health insurance policy in 2014.One-third of this group, or 4% nationally, say they did not have insurance in 2013. Another 7.5% got a new policy this year that replaced a previous policy. The rest either did not respond or were uncertain about their previous insurance status.
The key figure is the 4% who are newly insured in 2014, which most likely represents Americans' response to the individual mandate requirement the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This estimate of the newly insured broadly aligns with the reduction Gallup has seen in the national uninsured rate from 2013 to the first days of April 2014. However, the calculation of the newly insured does not take into account those who may have been insured in 2013 but not in 2014.
ProPublica:
The reason for the decline of Central's homecoming parade is no secret. In 2000, another federal judge released Tuscaloosa City Schools from the court-ordered desegregation mandate that had governed it for a single generation. Central had successfully achieved integration, the district had argued—it could be trusted to manage that success going forward.
Freed from court oversight, Tuscaloosa's schools have seemed to move backwards in time. The citywide integrated high school is gone, replaced by three smaller schools. Central retains the name of the old powerhouse, but nothing more. A struggling school serving the city's poorest part of town, it is 99 percent black. D'Leisha, an honors student since middle school, has only marginal college prospects. Predominantly white neighborhoods adjacent to Central have been gerrymandered into the attendance zones of other, whiter schools.
Tuscaloosa's schools today are not as starkly segregated as they were in 1954, the year the Supreme Court declared an end to separate and unequal education in America. No all-white schools exist anymore—the city's white students generally attend schools with significant numbers of black students. But while segregation as it is practiced today may be different than it was 60 years ago, it is no less pernicious: in Tuscaloosa and elsewhere, it involves the removal and isolation of poor black and Latino students, in particular, from everyone else. In Tuscaloosa today, nearly one in three black students attends a school that looks as if Brown v. Board of Education never happened.
Read this piece. Then read
Jonathan Capehart:
Baseball great Hank Aaron is catching hell for telling the truth. Actually, the Hall of Famer is catching hell from racists because he had the temerity to point out that racism still exists. Those who think otherwise are delusional and willfully ignorant of the racial state of play in the United States.
Tom Kludt:
One of the GOP's rising stars is responding to a critical piece in Mother Jones by doing what Republicans do best: attacking the "liberal media."
Andy Kroll of Mother Jones penned an article Wednesday on New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez replete with audio recordings, text messages and emails.
In one recording, Martinez referred to Diane Denish, her 2010 Democratic opponent, as "that little bitch." A recording of a 2010 conference call revealed that Martinez had no knowledge of a state panel that serves as an advocate for women. During preparation for a debate, a Martinez aide was recorded saying that New Mexico political icon Ben Luján "sounds like a retard" when he speaks English.
It didn't take long for Martinez to exploit the piece.
Hours after it was published, Martinez circulated a fundraising email decrying the "D.C. Liberal media."
NY Times:
Mr. Perry, who began serving as governor in December 2000 and who leaves office in January 2015 after deciding not to seek re-election, has gone to great lengths to show he is not the same man he was during his disastrous 2012 presidential bid, including wearing designer eyeglasses to enhance his statesmanlike appearance.
But in recent days, Mr. Perry’s final months in office have been interrupted by a political and legal problem at home, one that could haunt him on the campaign trail should he run for president and that his Democratic critics are using to accuse him of punishing his political enemies.