The status of the Affordable Care Act is all good news if you listen to accounts from the White House.

An Era article appearing on 4/18 stated the president had announced the number of newly insured had risen to 8 million. Also, 35 percent of them are under 35 years of age. They are the younger and healthier taxpayers who will pay for a huge chunk of law. 

They were “selected” to “subsidize” the health care of those who cannot pay the premium. They will pay and the president will repeat that this was done by the “federal government.”

The boldest announcement of all? The president said, “This thing is working.” I find it a bit more than premature to tout success after just a year that it was and still is infested with mistakes, glitches, errors and computer crashes. All but the most naive know a multitude of serious problems lie hidden in the law as yet unrevealed. The largest? Adequate and sustainable funding.

The president added that states who refused to embrace an expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare was, “Rooted in nothing more than sheer ideology and political spite.” Given the under-handed method the ACA was made law while a majority of Americans did not and do not agree with it, he has made use of ideology and political spite himself, all to get his way.

Like many, I am extremely skeptical of numbers we get from Washington and believe we get numbers they want us to have. While the president is patting himself on the back and touting favorable numbers for himself, he quickly shies from numbers that tell us with some accuracy, what the ACA will actually cost you.  He has no idea.

I would also like to see hard numbers as to how many have been enrolled in the “expanded Medicaid” and what are the feelings of the some 20 million that he bragged would be covered and are not now covered. He knew then the fiscal mountain to put 30 million more on the government controlled health care was impossible, yet many bought into his game.

Leon Hillyard

Eldred