Celebrating Obamacare's Exchange "Success"

Last week a new report came out - albeit not from CMS - showing Obamacare's enrollment results for 2018. The headlines make the case that enrollment is "stable", that the law "isn't dead". Another headline by the AP's Ricardo Alonzo-Zaldivar portrays it as a success "despite efforts to dismantle the ACA" by the Trump Administration. Fast Company's headline goes as far as to say Obamacare is "still pretty popular" despite attempts to "kill it."

These stories are total spin showing media are nothing more than fairweather fans. The truth is, since 2015, Obamacare's exchange enrollment figures show that Team Obama hasn't been able to move the football down the field. What has changed, is in eight years of Obamacare we have seen goalposts moved. This allowed Team Obama to spike the football on a field that is less than half the size of what they originally were playing on.

In the original CBO score enrollment in the exchange was supposed to be 21 million in 2016, 23 million in 2017, and 24 million in 2018. By 2016 CBO set new goal posts hoping to break 13 million. Cutting the field in half was the only way Obamacare supporters could claim that insurance exchanges are working. You can see here how bad the exchanges have actually performed.

The chart is nothing to celebrate. This is not a success. This is a football team that is entrenched in mediocrity. The team has struggled to move the ball because the offense being run doesn't work. Instead of being open to a new offense, fairweather fans jumped on the bandwagon embracing changes to the rules of the game. When that didn't work they started blaming losses on the new coach who inherited a mediocre team from his predecessor.