One Unexpected Success Of Obamacare

Many people were eligible for Medicaid prior to the Affordable Care Act, but they didn’t know it. With all the publicity surrounding the rollout of Obamacare, many people inquired about their eligibility and discovered they could get coverage.

The clearest example of this is in the red states that aren’t participating in the law’s Medicaid expansion: There, 91,000 people have tried to sign up for health insurance and learned, in the process, that they are already eligible for Medicaid coverage.

The effect is also present in the blue states. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that of the 70,000 people who’ve enrolled in Medicaid in Washington State, 30,000 were eligible before the new law took effect — they just didn’t know it.

The result is that while the expansion of health-care coverage still isn’t working nearly as well as it needs to be, it’s actually making preexisting coverage expansions work better than they ever have.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.