But we're not discussing an influx of participants but lowered costs for those participants, the new ones signing up and existing participants.
That’s exactly what we’re discussing. The OP is about 1 million new enrollees since February.
And the OP is also about the reduced costs to participants, and the conversation you jumped in the middle of was about the costs, not the numbers. Of course a big reason why we have nearly a million new enrollees is the costs are FAR more affordable for a big segment at the upper end of the subsidy range, i.e. working class Americans, especially older Americans, around 400% of FPL and above.
That’s an assumption. Seems to me the most likely reason there are a million new enrollees is that millions lost their jobs and insurance during the pandemic and their COBRA benefits are expiring.
The drop in premiums is not an assumption - that's real - and if you want to say making insurance far cheaper for a bunch of people didn't encourage a bunch of new people to sign up, that's a bigger assumption that frankly doesn't make a lot of sense.
Obamacare = private insurance policies, so they're as 'good' a buy as any insurance.
Why didn't the million sign up in 2020, during the Trump-era enrollment period? Perhaps because they couldn't afford the premiums, and now they can? Makes sense to me.
Obamacare isn't even a good buy for anyone unless you get subsidized.
It was linked in the OP, and Greenbeard quoted from both the article in the NYT and the HHS release. I assumed that since you denied that anything Biden had signed helped, you were aware of the law or at least bothered to read the OP. From the OP:
And:
The point of my first comment was Biden and the Democrats delivered within weeks what Trump and the GOP have promised for a decade. The biggest beneficiaries of the new subsidies are exactly the 'middle class working families' who made too much to make healthcare affordable for them - lots of them older, within a decade or so of Medicare, and making a decent but not great salary, often two earner couples, who either fell outside the 400% of FPL cliff, or whose subsidies didn't really help with healthcare insurance, or had high deductibles. The new law limits healthcare spending to 8.5% of expected income, and so helped a lot of people at the upper end of ACA subsidies, and beyond. Much more here:
One of Greenbeard's links takes you to a map that I think deserves to be linked directly. Look at who the big beneficiaries are of this bill, and where. They are older, often in red states, who aren't making near poverty wages, but making a good living at age 60 but with high healthcare costs because fo their age. It made insurance DRASTICALLY more affordable for them. That's a good thing. Better if they just transitioned into Medicare but this is a very good answer for those folks who kind of fell into a donut hole.
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More people will move to ACA, eventually it will become as common place go to choice as is Medicare. It just takes some people longer to face reality and truth than it does others.
COBRA is expensive, why would anyone pay that when they could jump on government subsidized insurance instead?
Because I think employer provided plans are better than anything on offer in the Obamacare marketplace and its unwise to be voluntarily cheaping out in the middle of a pandemic.
You are correct, they are better.
I know this is fruitless, but can you describe how a typical employer-provided plan is better than, say, a silver plan on the exchange? I don't mean in general terms - lower copays or something, because that's a function of how the ACA splits the cost, versus how an employer decides to split the cost - but what the plans cover, and the total, unsubsidized cost per person or per family
If you're on an employer plan, "they" have to take everyone. It's one reason why we all love, love our employer-based system. If your wife has had breast cancer, you pay the same premiums as someone with a family who's never seen a doctor and charged insurance a penny outside annual physicals or something. If you're 62 with 3 heart attacks, and get a new job with employer based coverage, again, that premium is the same as (in most cases) that 26 year old who is in great physical health. That's made possible in part by HUGE government subsidies that we've had for decades. ACA just extends who gets government subsidies to the poor and now 'middle class' who don't have an employer splitting the costs.
Why would you limit what I mean by better?
The reason I excluded copays or average premiums paid by employees is those simply are not a function of the insurance plan, what it covers, and what it costs SOMEONE to put in place. If your employer pays 90% of the cost of your insurance, that is "better", for you, than an unsubsidized plan on the exchange, because you only pay 10% of the actuarial cost at work. You can't compare that employer plan where you pay 10% of the actuarial cost to an ACA plan where you pay 100%, except to tell us that, yes, subsidies to you lower your cost.
MY insurance plan is better for ME, than the subsidized insurance plan for you.
On what level? Coverage, total cost, copays?
Get 'more' how?
This was your claim, and it goes far beyond just you:
The ACA plan that is as affordable as the employee contribution plan has higher deductibles, higher co-pays, likely changes the doctor you see, costs you more on Hospitals, ER Visits.
Just a clarification, the annual taxpayer subsidies of employer provided insurance is about $280 billion, per year. When you get paid in the form of 'free' health insurance, or get subsidized by the employer, you don't pay income or payroll taxes on that income. The more money you make (i.e. the higher your marginal tax bracket) and the more generous the employer plan so amount paid to you in the form of health insurance, the bigger the taxpayer subsidy YOU get.
