Wasn’t Signing Up The Uninsured The Entire Point Of Obamacare?

March 10, 2014 | Weasel Zippers/Washington Post The new health insurance marketplaces appear to be making little headway so far in signing up Americans who lack health insurance, the Affordable Care Act’s central goal. A pair of surveys released on Thursday suggest that just one in 10 uninsured people who qualify for private health plans through the new marketplace have signed up for one — and that about half of uninsured adults has looked for information on the online exchanges or plans to look. Taken together, the snapshots shown by the surveys provide preliminary answers to what has been one of the biggest mysteries since HealthCare.gov and separate state marketplaces opened last fall: Are they attracting their prime audience? One of the surveys, by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., shows that, of people who had signed up for coverage through the marketplaces by last month, just one-fourth described themselves as having been without insurance for most of the past year. The survey also attempted to gauge what has been another fuzzy matter: how many of the people actually have the insurance for which they signed up. Under federal rules, coverage begins only if someone has started to pay their monthly insurance premiums. And, the survey show, that just over half of uninsured people said they had started to pay, compared with nearly nine in 10 of those signing up on the exchanges who said they were simply switching from one health plan to another. Read original article at Weasel Zippers/Washington Post - http://weaselzippers.us/178440-devastating-just-one-in-10-uninsured-americans-have-signed-up-for-obamacare/ See more at: http://conservativecontacts.com/articles/wasn-t-signing-up-the-uninsured-the-entire-point-of-obamacare#sthash.5t8AOGVZ.