by NW Spotlight
Jeffrey Anderson at Weekly Standard wrote an article yesterday [1] that points out that Obamacare has fallen short by 24 million people the number of Americans who will have private health insurance.
In 2013 the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected Obamacare “would result in an average of 201 million people having private health insurance in any given month of 2016. Now that 2016 is here, the CBO says that just 177 million people, on average, will have private health insurance in any given month of this year.”
Anderson goes on to note “It turns out that Obamacare is pretty much a giant Medicaid expansion.” Medicaid is the government health care payment system for the poor. “The CBO now says that 68 million people will be on Medicaid or CHIP in 2016” – that’s DOUBLE what the CBO projected in 2013, “on the eve of Obamacare’s implementation.”
Over 1 million Oregonians are on [2] Medicaid (1,033,518 – including CHIP – as of Dec 2015). Oregon has [3] a little over 4 million people now (4,013,845 – PSU estimate for July 2015) – so that’s more than 1 in 4 Oregonians on Medicaid (25.75%).
Note that Medicaid is different from Medicare – Medicare is government administered health insurance for people age 65 and older and younger people with certain disabilities. The over 1 million Oregonians on Medicaid does not count the number of Oregonians who are on Medicare. Based on U.S. Census data [4], there are around 645,000 Oregonians who are 65 or older.