White House: 11.4 million Americans enrolled in Obamacare this year

On Wednesday, February 18, 2015, Author Jon Green posted a blog on the Americablog website, titled “White House: 11.4 million Americans enrolled in Obamacare this year.” Jon portrays an opinion style blog. Jon Green graduated from Kenyon College with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, and also earned a high honors in Political Cognition. Also, he worked as a field director for President Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012. His intended audience for this blog is for the American citizens.

 In this blog he talks about the outstanding results for this year’s enrollment of 11.4 million people for the American Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. February 15^th 2015 was the deadline to enroll for coverage under Obamacare and the results were much better than expected. Jon mentions that the Department of Health and Human Services’ original estimate for this year was a bit over 9 million signups; you can imagine that the employees at the Department of Health and Human Services were surprised. Compared to last year’s total of 6.7 million enrollees, this year’s total shows that changes were actually set in place for Americans to get our hands on affordable healthcare and also faith in Obamacare is on the rise.

Jon states that “Basic economics would suggest that if you mandate that people buy a cheaper product than what was previously available on the open market, more people will buy.” This is something that the Conservative Heritage Foundation predicted. A quick rundown about The Heritage plan, number one “All citizens should be guaranteed universal access to affordable health care,” number two “Mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance.” He also mentions that we citizens need to keep in mind two specific things about the Affordable Care Act, it has beaten expectations and it has done so despite having to drag the red states (Republican states) along with issues that would follow. These successes also come in spite of pending decision on the Supreme Court case of King v. Burwell, which conservatives are trying to challenge subsidies on the federally run state exchanges. Jon then says that this is why Republicans are hoping that Burwell loses the court case. Can you imagine the estimated 9,800 people who would die because of the dropped coverage if King succeeds? Everyone would blame the Republicans. Regardless, we need to thank the people that have worked to insure millions of citizens. We have to remember that there is lots of work that needs to be done and nothing changes without us Americans knowing.

From the looks of it Obamacare is coming together slowly but surely. Overall, I agree with Jon Green because compared to last year’s results of 6.7 million sign ups, 11.4 million does makes an enormous difference. It also makes me feel a bit more comfortable to insure myself, if all those American citizens trust the Affordable Care Act at its current state. As a college student I have some financial limitations and with the Affordable Care Act, I may qualify for lower monthly premiums and other savings, which is extremely beneficial in my book. I also get the benefit of buying a catastrophic health insurance plan in order to protect myself from worst case scenarios such as horrible accidents or illnesses. Honestly, I would rather be safe than sorry.