Don’t rush to judge Obamacare

Los Angeles Times: The first open enrollment period under the Affordable Care Act ended with roughly 7.5 million people obtaining policies through new state insurance exchanges, including more than 1.3 million at Covered California.

That’s an amazing and welcome result, considering how badly many of the exchanges stumbled when sign-ups began in October. Nevertheless, it’s far too early to judge the success or failure of the health-care law, given that key tests of the program’s sustainability have yet to be passed.

Almost all of the exchanges got off to a wretched start, particularly the federally managed ones that shared a mind-bogglingly dysfunctional website. And yetsign-ups increased dramatically as the deadline for enrolling approached. The results are significantly better than had been projected in California, and modestly better for the country as a whole.

It’s hard to say how much headway the law is making toward insuring the uninsured, however. The exchanges didn’t measure how many of their new enrollees had previously lacked coverage. Although two recent surveys show a sharp drop in the overall percentage of uninsured Americans, analysts at Rand Corp. say most of the increase came from people gaining coverage through an employer, not the exchanges.