Cross-posted from the archived Media Trackers Ohio site.
Only 1,150 Ohioans selected plans through the Obamacare “Health Insurance Marketplace” in the first month following its launch, according to a November 13 release from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
For context, Ohio Stadium in Columbus seats 102,329. There are more than 1,400 beds on the main campus of the Cleveland Clinic.
The number of Ohioans choosing Obamacare plans through November 2 was barely 15 percent of the 7,535 total HHS reported were “Determined or assessed eligible for Medicaid / CHIP by the Marketplace.”
The Obamacare Medicaid expansion, rammed past Ohio’s legislature last month by Republican Governor John Kasich, is expected to add 684,000 Ohioans to the Medicaid rolls by 2022. President Obama and leftist commentators have pointed to Gov. Kasich’s expansion of Medicaid as a major win for the Democrats’ imploding 2010 health law.
Interestingly, 24,050 Ohioans completed applications in the first month after the Obamacare exchanges launched at HealthCare.gov, indicating that many declined to choose a plan after learning Obamacare policies will be far more expensive than currently-available policies.
Based on the HHS release, 34,374 Ohioans were determined eligible to enroll in an Obamacare plan and 11,866 were deemed eligible for federal Obamacare subsidies.
The Kaiser Family Foundation recently estimated that in 2014, up to 812,000 Ohioans will buy coverage through the Obamacare exchange and 544,000 will qualify for subsidies.
With a deadline coming up in mid-December for Obamacare applicants to choose their policies in order to receive financial assistance starting January 1, just 0.14 percent of the Ohioans expected to use the Obamacare marketplace have selected an Obamacare plan.
If all 11,866 Ohioans determined eligible for Obamacare subsidies between October 1 and November 2 had actually purchased a policy, it would take almost 45 more months — until mid-2017 — for subsidized enrollment to hit the Kaiser eligibility estimate of 544,000.
Nationally, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius claims that 106,185 have signed up for Obamacare plans through the federal and state-run exchanges.
“The enrollment figures include those who have not paid their first month’s premium,” the Washington Examiner noted this afternoon.
As Media Trackers and many other outlets have reported, the Obamacare exchange website HealthCare.gov has been riddled with technical issues since its highly-anticipated October 1 launch. Socialized medicine advocates have waved off widespread programming errors as “glitches” or even as proof of Obamacare’s popularity.
Assurances that the federal exchange would be working by the end of November are already being walked back by the Obama Administration.
Ohio insurers have not yet released estimates of how many policyholders will lose their existing plans due to Obamacare, but already millions of Americans are learning that the president’s “if you like your plan, you can keep it” promise was a lie.