More than half of 1.2 million Texans who enrolled in private health insurance plans through the federally operated marketplace this year were new customers, according to a government report released Tuesday.
The analysis from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said 57 percent of Texans who enrolled in 2015 – about 681,500 people – were first-time consumers, who did not buy health insurance through the HealthCare.gov platform last year.
[…]
The vast majority of shoppers qualified for tax credits to help pay their insurance premiums. In Texas alone, more than a million people – 86 percent of those who enrolled – were granted tax credits. The average tax credit seen in Texas was $239 per month, Dr. Meena Seshamani, director of the federal Health and Human Services’ Office of Health Reform, said during a conference call with reporters Tuesday.
Before tax credits were applied, the average monthly premium in Texas would have been $328, the report showed. Once the tax credits took effect, the average monthly premium for marketplace plans across the state was $89.
There was indeed a data dump this week, because sites like Daily Kos, which points to Medium, and Wonkblog, which points to the Kaiser Family Foundation, are highlighting the state of play and what the effect would be if the Supreme Court buys the ridiculous argument in King v. Burwell (which the plaintiffs’ own lawyer agreed was BS) and throws out the subsidies for healthcare.gov recipients. The effect in Texas would be substantial, perhaps finally big enough to get people like Erin Meredith to pay attention. Regardless of that, follow those links and look at those charts and remind yourself that this law has helped a lot of people, and anyone who says otherwise is at best misinformed or (in the case of elected officials and hacks from outfits like the TPPF) lying. Ask the people who have insurance now when they didn’t before and who stand to lose it if the Supreme Court decides to take it away from them.
Hey Chuck:
You’ve got an open ital tag in this post, leaving all the ones on down the page with indented text. I doubt that’s what you intended, but if it is, ignore this.