Obamacare Continues to Run Ahead of Projections in 2015

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The latest CDC figures on the uninsured are out, and after a small uptick last quarter they were back down again by the end of 2015. The uninsured rate clocked in at 10.3 percent,1 compared to a projection of 11 percent from the CBO back in 2012 (this was the projection published after the Supreme Court made Medicaid expansion optional but before the exchanges were up and running). This means that Obamacare has been consistently running ahead of projections for the past two years.

It’s worth noting, of course, that this number could be even lower. If red states adopted the Medicaid expansion, the number of uninsured would likely be around 8 percent or so. Also: among the poor, the number of uninsured has plummeted under Obamacare, from above 40 percent to below 25 percent. Needless to say, this number would plummet even further if red states were willing to accept federal money to help the poor. But they aren’t.

1You may have seen news reports that the uninsured rate was 9.1 percent. That number includes everyone, including the elderly, who bring down the average because they basically have a 0 percent uninsurance rate. I use the nonelderly rate because that corresponds to the original CBO estimates.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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