The mini-brouhaha within the broader uproar over Obamacare in Washington today is that Republicans are complaining the new enrollment figures announced by HHS yesterday include people whose first premium payments haven’t been verified. Greg Sargent devotes half a column to unraveling and rebutting this particular nonsense.
The piece on California I quoted in the last post has a pretty simple answer to the question about premium payments:
Anthony Wright, executive director of the watchdog consumer group Health Access, which has at times been critical of Covered California, said before the enrollment numbers were announced that the first month’s figures were not critical. Noting that coverage does not begin until Jan. 1 no matter when purchased, Wright said: “There are not a lot of people who pay their bills three months in advance. I know I don’t.”
That’s one less critique of Obamacare we should be discussing.
