World News Korner

Surge in Obamacare signups and the Democratic plans to run on its successes.

Courtesy of ABC News:

States running their own Obamacare insurance exchanges are reporting a significant surge in sign-ups just four days (This article is a few days old, so now it is is only two days.) before the first major enrollment deadline.

The increase has ranged from 30 percent to 40 percent in the past few weeks, according to state officials who briefed reporters Wednesday. Monday is the last day to sign up for a plan that will guarantee health coverage effective Jan. 1.

California, which has one of the most successful programs, averaged 15,000 enrollments a day last week, up from an average 7,000 a day the week before, state officials said. In all of November, 80,000 Californians picked a plan; in the first week of December, 50,000 signed up.

“We are all still in the first inning of a nine-inning game,” Covered California executive director Peter Lee said. “Friends are telling friends; family are telling family. … We are quite confident that as we go into the next half of enrollment that we will build momentum.”

In Kentucky, enrollments are up 40 percent since Thanksgiving, straining the state’s exchange and forcing administrators to hire dozens of extra call-center workers and application processors. “We are seeing about 3,000 people a day approved for Medicaid or a [qualified health plan],” Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange executive director Carrie Banahan said. “We started out a few weeks ago at about a thousand per day.”

More than 92,000 people have gotten coverage so far.

In New York, phones at marketplace call centers are ringing off the hook, averaging between 1,200 to 1,500 calls per hour, officials say. Roughly 4,500 people are enrolling in coverage each day, state Department of Health counsel Lisa Sbrana said.

In the past week alone, they’ve seen a 34 percent increase in people signing up.

That success has inspired the Democrats to change tactics, and rather than focus on their concerns about the program they have decided to go all in to run on its successes as well as the Democrats concerted effort to keep making it better.

This from the Daily Beast:

Top Democratic strategists said the coming counteroffensive isn’t so much a full-on embrace of the warts-and-all Affordable Care Act rollout, but rather a reminder that Republicans’ call for repeal means the well-liked aspects of the law, such as the end of the lifetime cap on health spending and the end of pre-existing-condition discrimination, would wither as well. They plan also to tie Republicans’ continued efforts to a larger framework of obstruction, linking their unwillingness to improve the law to intransigence about budgetary issues that led to a government shutdown this year.

“They are so committed to their plan—which is repeal—that they shut down the government trying to implement their plan,” said Michael Czin, press secretary for the Democratic National Committee. He pointed out that while many are seeing benefits of the health-care law despite its frail website, Republicans like Sen. John Cornyn of Texas are facing primary challengers just for declining to keep the government shutdown over the law.

“Democrats are making to work it better. Republicans are trying to take it away.”

Right now it seems that the GOP strategy is to simply bitch about every little bump along the Obamacare road to better, cheaper insurance, and to focus attention on anyone who had a bad experience, whether real or made up.

Personally I think that the Republicans are rapidly running out ammunition and that the final stages of the 2014 race will look like Custer's last stand.

I also just realized that I only have about two days to sign up for the Affordable Care Act in order to count myself among the first wave. Wish me luck.

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