If California Can Make Obamacare Work, Anyone Can
I’ve mentioned before that Obamacare’s rollout problems really are all about the website. Rate shock and network shock may be real problems for some people, but they aren’t deal breakers and they aren’t as serious or as widespread as Fox News is trying to make them out to be. Fix the website and Obamacare will be in pretty good shape.
Paul Krugman produces some pretty good evidence for this today: California. It is, he says, an excellent test case:
First of all, it’s huge: if a system can work for 38 million people, it can work for America as a whole. Also, it’s hard to argue that California has had any special advantages….[It] came into health reform with 22 percent of its nonelderly population uninsured, compared with a national average of 18 percent.
Finally, the California authorities have been especially forthcoming with data tracking the progress of enrollment. And the numbers are increasingly encouraging.