The Majority Of The 25,000 People Signed Up For The Washington State Obamacare Website Will Get Fully Subsidized Insurance

About 25,000 people have signed up despite the problems caused by the incredibly glitchy, constantly crashing website. However, there’s a little problem with the people signing up.

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Enrollments in health care plans through Washington state’s new health care exchange continue to increase, but it turns out a majority of the enrollees so far won’t be paying for their plans.

“The Medicaid newly eligible population accounts for a little more than half of the 25,000 that we’ve seen,” Michael Marchand, with the new Washington Health Care Exchange, tells KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross.

A Medicaid expansion under Obamacare raised the income threshold for those eligible.

“So that’s the new population that’s part of the expansion that the state undertook,” says Marchand. “It’s quite possible that those people may have never had health insurance in the past and have been able to go to Washington Health Plan Finder and determine that their eligibility actually qualifies them for free insurance.”

In addition to the 25,000 enrolled, an additional 37,000 residents have completed online applications that are awaiting payment that is due in December.

The state estimates about 1 million Washington state residents do not have health insurance, or about one in seven people.

Marchand says they’ve found the bulk of those uninsured will likely get fully-subsidized health care or assistance of some kind.

If you think about it, this isn’t a big surprise. The only people who are going to go through hours of waiting, dozens of crashes, and calls-in for help and endless frustration are the most needy people. If you can’t get insurance anywhere else or it’s a way to get free insurance when you have none, it may be worth it to be spend a whole day trying to get signed up on an Internet site.

The problem with this is the way insurance works.

When all the sick people and people who pay nothing are signing up while the healthy people the companies can make money on aren’t bothering, that means prices will soar. Obamacare isn’t on pace to get anywhere near the 7 million people it needs to break even signing up and the early sign-ups, when the earned media levels are going to be the highest, are going to be people who drive costs up for everyone else, not down.

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