The truth behind the Obamacare numbers

The truth behind the Obamacare numbers | TBO.com, The Tampa Tribune and The Tampa Times

The latest enrollment data for Medicaid and private plans show that the number of Americans with coverage increased by 8.5 million during the first half of 2014. However, 6.1 million of that number were new Medicaid enrollees, with private-market enrollment increasing by 2.4 million individuals.

In other words, 71 percent of the total coverage gain came from Obamacare expanding Medicaid to able-bodied, working-age adults.

Digging further into the private market data, we find that the number of people covered by individual-market plans increased by 6.2 million, but that the number of those with employer-group coverage declined by 3.8 million. Thus, the drop in employment-based coverage offset 61 percent of the growth in individual-market coverage, resulting in a net increase in private coverage of only about 2.4 million.