The Republicans have done their best to try and make sure the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is a failure. They have lied about the program, pronounced it to be an unworkable failure, urged citizens not to comply with it, and voted to repeal it numerous times. But their efforts to obstruct the program and prevent it from being successful have been for naught, because the latest numbers show that Obamacare is a huge success.
When Obamacare became law, the Congressional Budget Office predicted about 7 million Americans would purchase private insurance through the program by the first cut-off date (March 31st). After the program got off to a very slow start, due to computer glitches and consumer reticence, the CBO adjusted its sales estimate down to 6 million. It now looks like that adjustment was necessary.
As of March 28th, there had been more than 6.622 million purchases of private insurance policies through the state and federal health exchanges. It is still very possible that the 7 million mark could be reached by the end of March, and if not, it will be easily achieved early in April (since the deadline has been extended for those who have had trouble accessing the exchanges). And if you add in the number of new people who have purchased insurance without going through the state or federal exchanges (but still get the same prices and benefits), the number of private insurance purchases has already topped 7 million.
And that is just a portion of the new people now covered with insurance thanks to Obamacare. When you add in the young people under 26 who have been added to their parents' policies (3.101 million) and the new Medicaid and CHIPS sign-ups (10.429 million), you'll find that the number of new people with health insurance in the United States is about 20.152 million. That's not everyone in this country that needs health insurance, but it is a significant achievement (and is expected to grow in the future as more people realize that Obamacare is a better deal than what we had before).
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But while Obamacare has been successful, the Republican efforts to stop it have been shameful -- and nothing is more shameful than the 25 states where Republicans have prevented Medicaid from being expanded. This refusal to expand Medicaid is preventing millions from getting the insurance they need to access preventative care -- and that inability to get preventative care in those 25 states is going to kill thousands of people (somewhere between 7,114 and 17,106 every year).
One of the favorite lies of the Republicans is that Obamacare created "death panels" to make end of life decisions for the elderly in this country. That is not true at all, but that doesn't mean there are death panels -- the death panels composed of Republicans in the 25 states that refuse to expand Medicaid. It is not the elderly that is victimized by these GOP death panels, but the poor. Here is a state-by-state breakdown of the number of people that will be killed each year by these GOP death panels.
