President Barack Obama is beginning today what appears to be a full court press to try to get people, particularly younger people, to sign up for the Affordable Care Act, a key to its success.
In addition to sending $150 million to the states’ community health centers, including Michigan’s $3.75 million, to help them enroll people, Obama will be talking today about all the good things encapsulated in the more than 2,000 page act. He will particularly appeal to women and young Americans, his main base of support in the past two elections
For good reason. A recent poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that overall, 57 percent of Americans do not believe they have enough information to make informed decisions in the new marketplace. A whopping 67 percent of the presently uninsured don’t believe they have enough information to sign up for the new program.
The ACA was ramrodded through a Democratic Congress in 2010 and signed by the president without so much as one vote from Republicans. And now that strategy is coming back to haunt the president. Without any Republican support, some GOP governors are refusing to play along with strategies they didn’t approve of in the first place. This is most significant in the setting up of insurance exchanges, a centerpiece of Obama’s legislation. Many states with GOP governors are letting the feds set up the state exchanges.
Other states have refused to go along with the expansion of Medicaid.
But some of the problems are self-inflicted. A program to cover people with pre-existing conditions has cost more than expected, causing it to be shut down to new enrollees, even though only a quarter of the people expected to sign up actually did.
This has caused Merrill Matthews, a resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas, to write for Forbes: “One of Obama’s primary justifications for demanding health care reform was to help the uninsurables get coverage, and he has closed that provision to new entrants.”
Insurers, too, once supporters, are backing away. According to Matthews, quoting Reuters, “In recent days, executives at the four largest U.S. health insurers say they are likely to sell insurance plans on less than a third of the exchanges, reluctant to venture out beyond the states where they already offer coverage.”
In addition to the uncertainties and problems cited above, there has been speculation by actuaries that health care premiums will increase, some as much as 100 percent.
Despite Americans’ trepidation, supporters are encouraged.
“We’re in the phase for the actual meat of the law to come online,” said Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress, a liberal group aligned with the White House. “It’s important for the public to recognize that the law has tangible benefits to people so they feel comfortable enrolling.”
Still, Obama has a hard sell.