Obamacare - the hidden details

Warren Meyer has done an excellent job of breaking down the raw data on Obamacare enrollments, to reveal that it's costing us - the taxpayers of America - a whole lot more than its proponents want us to know.

As you can see, of the nearly 3.7 million people who have selected a private plan or been put in Medicaid or CHIP, fully 88% are on the government dole (subsidized or full Medicare).

The interesting new data is on the plan selection breakdown between subsidized and un-subsidized.   This leads to an interesting finding that is a bit non-obvious from the report itself because the data is spread all over the report.  But lets look at conversion of applicants to plan selection based on whether folks are subsidized or subsidized.

For the 2,383,131 applicants who find they are no going to be subsidized, only 436,603 have selected a plan, for a 18% conversion rate

For the 2,756,667 applicants who find they will get supported by the taxpayer, 1,646,237 selected a plan, far a 60% conversion rate.

In essence, applicants are more than 3 times more likely to sign up if they are getting taxpayer money.  The exchanges are not selling health care, they are selling subsidies.  People sign up, check to see if they have money coming, and go away if they don't and stay if they do.

There's more at the link, including a diagram showing the progress of visitors to the Obamacare Web site as they move through the application process.  Bold underlined text above is my emphasis.

I understand it was intended for many more young and financially self-sufficient people to enroll in Obamacare, thereby subsidizing those who couldn't afford the premiums.  Gee, that's working well, isn't it?

Peter