The Republican assault on Obamacare has gone far, far beyond just repeal votes in the House of Representatives. The most effective efforts have been in the states, if by effective you mean undermining the law by keeping people uninsured. Republicans are really good at keeping people uninsured. How good? The above
chart from Talking Points Memo shows the discrepancy in enrollments in both Medicaid/SCHIP and private insurance between the states that embraced the law fully, partially, and not at all.
That comes from enrollment data compiled by Theda Skocpol, professor of government and sociology at Harvard University. States that fully embraced the law by creating and marketing their own exchanges and expanding Medicaid, like California and New York, have enrolled about 43 percent of people eligible for Medicaid in these first few months, and 37 percent with private enrollments. Compare that to the states like Texas and Florida which have refused to participate. That refusal hasn't just kept people in the Medicaid gap, it's suppressed private insurance enrollments. Just 1.5 percent of eligible Medicaid recipients have been enrolled, and just 5.6 percent of people in private enrollments. Skocpol discussed the data with TPM.
"You go back to how the law was designed, for better or worse, it gave states a lot of responsibility," Skocpol told TPM. "The states that have actually done things the way the law envisaged are the ones that are, at this early stage, doing the most toward those goals."
"But the 'Just Say No' states are putting all their lower income residents at risk," she continued, "not just by refusing to expand Medicaid but also, in many cases, by failing to help people get subsidized private coverage through the exchange."
This is early data, as there will be a lot more sign-ups in the next three months of open enrollment. [
Update: The data from states using the federal exchange includes information just through November, so revised numbers could be significantly better, since the site has been fixed since then.] But there's still the very real possibility that millions of people—those in the Medicaid gap and more—could remain uninsured because of Republican obstruction. That's exactly what Republicans intended all along, of course. But it's very much worth reiterating that it's not just the very low-income potential Medicaid recipients that are being left out here.
