July 30, 2014

It's working, continued

Between road trips, I've been blogging a good bit lately about the Affordable Care Act and how it is impacting West Virginia. Here's the latest, via my friends at West Virginians for Affordable Health Care:

*Enrollment in the expanded Medicaid program is now at 137,448. This is higher than I ever thought it would go. Even after a stellar job of signing people up, I expected new enrollments to level off and decline. Instead, it seems to be continuing at a rate close to 1,000 people per week. 

As Joe Biden might say, "Golly, that is a rather significant deal." (On second thought, he probably wouldn't use those exact words.)

*State Medicare recipients are reaping huge savings as ACA provisions that close the  prescription drug "doughnut hole" kick in. Specifically, 15,575 state residents saved over $12 million or $779 per person. Nationally, savings to beneficiaries were $1.3 billion this year and $11.5 billion since 2010.

It really is working.


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