Healthcare Enrollment Is Now ... Surging?

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

19 November 13

ou mean, if you commit to making something work, instead of deliberately conspiring to make something not work -- like if you put gas in your car and not hydrochloric acid -- that thing is more likely to, you know, work?

Genius!

"What we are seeing is incredible momentum," said Peter Lee, director of Covered California, the nation's largest state insurance marketplace, which accounted for a third of all enrollments nationally in October. California - which enrolled about 31,000 people in health plans last month - nearly doubled that in the first two weeks of this month. Several other states, including Connecticut and Kentucky, are outpacing their enrollment estimates, even as states that depend on the federal website lag far behind. In Minnesota, enrollment in the second half of October ran at triple the rate of the first half, officials said. Washington state is also on track to easily exceed its October enrollment figure, officials said.

However, I'm not sure I follow this bit of logic.

The growing enrollment in those states is a rare bit of good news for backers of the Affordable Care Act and suggests that the serious problems with the law's rollout may not be fatal, despite critics' renewed calls for repeal.

The Affordable Care Act is working the way it is supposed to work in those states in which officials have decided that it should work. How is that "bit of good news" "rare," exactly, except when compared to the constant, fact-free and plan-free harping of the Republicans in the House and their pundit enablers? Also, maybe if they're not "fatal," -- or, as this piece makes very plain, not even close to being "fatal" -- then the glitches in the rollout out are something less than "serious," too? And the "critics" who have "renewed" their "calls for repeal," are howling at the moon the way they always have howled at the moon. The law is not going to be repealed. We know that. They know that. The editors of the LA Times know that. When you see this kind of pseudo-"objective" boilerplate inserted in the story, always remember that you're being played by nervous newspaper panjandrums who don't want to be yelled at on the radio. Be aware, as the astronauts used to say.

Charlie has been a working journalist since 1976. He is the author of four books, most recently "Idiot America." He lives near Boston with his wife but no longer his three children.