ACA Enrollment by the Numbers

The final deadline to buy a 2017 Affordable Care Act plan is Tuesday night at midnight. And 87 percent of the 22 million folks who now have affordable health coverage through the ACA are happy with their insurance. The ACA also provides funding for vaccine services-such as tracking uptake rates in communities and administering free vaccines to poor children-and that, too, could be in danger.

And given the uncertainty of what is to come, Mundy said, “we may see insurance companies dropping off and the programs become unavailable”. Bossier Parish saw nearly 7,000 people now insured. More than half of them were in New York City.

One of the best ways to reduce health-care costs, according to Mundy, is a robust primary-care system in which people have access to annual checkups and a go-to professional for emerging health needs. At the January 15 health care rally in Canton, a counter-protester complained about paying for Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA, etc; concerns I share.

It should come as no surprise however, that two weeks into his administration, a full scale dismemberment of this complex law that has provided insurance for 20 million more Americans is going to be much more hard than the three word campaign promise used in his rallies made it seem. Numbers for states that don’t use the Healthcare.gov website weren’t released Friday, giving an incomplete picture of overall enrollment.

“It is important that a repeal on our side doesn’t create necessarily a crisis for our constituents or for the markets”, he said. People tell me they’re anxious about losing affordable health care and don’t know what to do.

Jason Cleckler, the CEO of Delta Memorial Hospital, is concerned that a total repeal without a replacement would hurt his hospital financially so much that it might force them to close. Demonstrators wrote reasons to keep the Affordable Care Act on the notes.

“I think if there’s a real change in direction away from these alternative payment models, we will be assuming risk to care for a population”. And it’s reduced our bad debt from 10 percent to two and a quarter percent. “That’s not what we promised the American people”.

Add to this discussion the fact that the new president recently promised great health care “insurance for everybody”, and it seems we may have the ingredients to reexamine an idea whose time may have finally arrived.