Yeah, we had lots of demand for health insurance. That’s what happens when you have so many uninsured people in a state.
It’s constitutional – deal with it
Almost all adult Texans knew of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace before its open enrollment ended March 31, new research shows.
In a report released Wednesday, Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation discovered about 2 million Texans who looked for marketplace information found the healthcare.gov website helpful. Almost half of those who went to the site wanted to buy insurance or check premium subsidy eligibility.
Wednesday’s report was based on responses from 1,595 Texans in September and 1,538 in March. The poll is part of the Urban Institute’s Health Reform Monitoring Survey, a national project on the 2010 health law’s implementation and changes in health insurance coverage and related health outcomes. The Baker Institute and the Episcopal Health Foundation are focusing on factors about Texans from an expanded survey sample of Texas residents. The report is the fifth on Texas’ health law implementation.
“In our previous report, we estimated that 746,000 Texans purchased insurance through the marketplace,” Vivian Ho, chair in health economics at the Baker Institute and a report author, said in written statement. “Given that 2 million Texans looked for coverage through the Marketplace, a strikingly high percentage of them elected to enroll in a health insurance plan.”
Here’s the report. More reports from the same group, which I’ve blogged about before, can be found here. Just imagine how many more visits and signups there could have been if our Republican state leaders weren’t so zealously committed to keeping people unhealthy.