Fun times ahead for this crew on Obamacare.
Health insurance enrollments are moving along swimmingly,
says Wellpoint, the parent company of Blue Cross and Blue Shield, with plans sold all over the country. In fact, they say, they are well ahead of expectations and think they'll get a million new enrollments this year.
“We are encouraged by the sizable growth opportunities,” said Wellpoint chief executive Joe Swedish in an hour-long conference call with Wall Street analysts and investors.
Though it’s early in analyzing the data from new applications of for coverage, Wellpoint executives said “80 percent were not previously insured by Wellpoint,” executives said on the call this morning.
It’s unclear whether they are newly insured or came from another plan, but executives said they were pleased the company was benefiting from new customers.
More than 80 percent of these new enrollments, Wellpoint says, came through the health insurance exchanges and the large majority of those—two-thirds—were eligible for subsidies. That's a heck of a lot of people having the positive experience of buying affordable health insurance. Win-win. Wellpoint gets a boatload of new paying customers, and most those paying customers get a break on premiums.
Who loses? Republicans who have to face the reality that Obamacare isn't going to collapse and that all these newly insured people are going to get used to having decent, affordable health insurance really fast.
