Medicaid Enrollment Could Spell Doom For Obamacare

[TemplarKormac]

There seems to be an issue of more people signing up for Medicaid than Obamacare. In Oregon alone, 56,000 people have signed up for Medicaid, while zero have signed up for Obamacare. At this rate, the law will collapse in on itself due to the lack of interest.

While virtually all the ObamaCare focus is trained on the program's dysfunctional website, another problem could be emerging -- in states where individuals are able to sign up, far more are enrolling in Medicaid than private plans.

For now, the statistics are spotty. The Obama administration still hasn't provided figures on how many people have successfully enrolled through the federally run exchanges. Some, but not all, states have provided their own relatively up-to-date figures.

But for those that have, the lopsided numbers show Medicaid is getting the lion's share of enrollees.

In Washington state, more than 35,000 people have signed up for coverage since Oct. 1. Of them, just 4,500 went into private plans. Roughly 31,000 signed up for Medicaid -- with coverage kicking in sometime between now and Jan. 1.

The director of the state's Health Care Authority said they were "pleased by the strong response of Medicaid-eligible residents."

But the imbalance -- if it does not even out in the months to come -- could create problems for private insurance companies which are relying on a major influx of new and healthy customers to make the system hum.

"There are a lot of elements of this law that have to work, that must work -- otherwise the whole thing collapses," the Cato Institute's Michael Cannon said. "They need -- need -- lots of healthy people to sign up for insurance through the exchanges."

Rush on Medicaid could spell trouble for ObamaCare?s health | Fox News