CBS News Is Very Concerned About Too Many Poor People Signing Up For Obamacare

BY IGOR VOLSKY/Think Progress

A new report for CBS News’ Jan Crawford warns that an influx of sick low income Americans applying for health care coverage could “threaten the entire structure of Obamacare.” The story argues that a rush of new Medicaid enrollees applying for the expanded program “at no cost to them” would mean that there “won’t be enough healthy people buying insurance for the system to work”:

CBS News has confirmed that in Washington, more than 35,000 people are newly enrolled. 87% signed up for Medicaid. In Kentucky, out of 26,000 new enrollments, 82% are on Medicaid. And in New York, of 37,000 enrollments, Medicaid accounts for 64%….[B]ut a former director says the numbers are causing concerns in the industry which needs healthy adults to buy insurance in order for this to work….industry sources say if we don’t see real turnaround soon, there could be big problems for the entire system.

Watch it:

While Medicaid is responsible for thousands and of new enrollments and appears more successful in enrolling uninsured Americans than private insurers operating in the exchange, its success does not spell doom for reform. Medicaid expansion — which serves individuals below 133 percent of the federal poverty line — and private insurers attract different enrollees and operate in completely different risk pools. Individuals qualify for tax credits in the new marketplaces if they have incomes below 400 percent of the federal poverty line. “People eligible for Medicaid are not eligible for tax credits to help low and middle income pay their premiums in health insurance exchanges,” Lary Levitt, of the Kaiser Family Foundation, said, “so they were never expected to be part of the individual insurance market risk pool.”

It’s also not a surprise that so many Americans are enrolling in the public insurance program this month. Back in May, the Congressional Budget Officepredicted that over half of the new Obamacare enrollees would consist of people signing up for Medicaid under the expansion of the program.

Several Medicaid experts ThinkProgress spoke to explained that the program, which was first signed into law in 1965, has years of experience in connecting low-income beneficiaries to health care benefits and has streamlined and simplified those processes. It is not dependent on the error-ridden federal exchange system and several states, including Arkansas, Illinois, West Virginia, and Oregon are auto-enrolling eligible individuals who are already receiving state benefits. Arkansas, for instance, sent letters to over 100,000 food stamp recipients, inviting them to apply for Medicaid coverage, along with a a stamped envelope and has enrolled 60,000 people. That program, incidentally runs through a “private option” waiver in which enrollees who would have been eligible for Medicaid are actually enrolling the very private exchange plans that Crawford claims are going under.

And as for those poor sick beneficiaries Crawford was describing, a studypublished in the Annals of Family Medicine, “found that newly eligible people are more likely to have an overall better health status than current beneficiaries, with 75 percent in ‘very good’ or ‘good’ health compared with 65 percent of current Medicaid recipients having ‘very good’ or ‘good’ health.”

If anything, the private exchange system can learn a lot from Medicaid’s high enrollment numbers — simplification, streamlining, and auto enrollment can help attract a lot of beneficiaries. That’s something that will help health care reform, not “disrupt it.”

Was Justice Thomas Behind The Obamacare Leaks?

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

The biggest revelation in CBS News reporter Jan Crawford’s piece on the Supreme Court’s health care deliberations isn’t that Chief Justice John Roberts originally voted to strike down the Affordable Care Act and then changed his mind — Crawford merely confirmed what many people already expected based on evidence in the opinions themselves. Rather, the biggest revelation is that fact that, in order for her piece to exist at all, someone inside the Court must have leaked confidential information to her.

Yesterday, the New York Times‘ Adam Liptak strongly implied that the leak could be Justice Clarence Thomas:

[T]he possibility that conservatives had victory within reach only to lose it seemed to infuriate some of them. The CBS News report, attributed to two sources with “specific knowledge of the deliberations,” appeared to give voice to the frustrations of people associated with the court’s conservative wing. It was written by Jan Crawford, whose 2007 book, “Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court,” was warmly received by conservatives.

In a 2009 interview on C-Span, Justice Thomas singled her out as a favorite reporter. “There are wonderful people out here who do a good job — do a fantastic job — like Jan Greenburg,” Justice Thomas said, referring to Ms. Crawford by her married name at the time.

Watch Thomas praise Crawford:

Thomas’ affection for Crawford is mutual, and Crawford has spent years defending Thomas against his critics. At times, these defenses have been thoughtful and compelling, such as when she shot down the ridiculous idea that Thomas is merely a lapdog for his less conservative colleague Justice Antonin Scalia, or when she defended Thomas’ wife’s Ginni’s right to have her own career regardless of what her husband does for a living. At other times, they have been much less thoughtful, such as when Crawford accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) of racism for criticizing Thomas. Crawford has also conducted high-profile interviews of Thomas in the past.

None of this, of course, proves conclusively that Thomas is one of Crawford’s two sources. But it does demonstrate that the two of them have a strong working relationship based on mutual admiration for each other. If Thomas were looking to leak confidential information to a member of the Supreme Court press, it is likely that he would choose the one reporter he has publicly revealed to be his favorite. The fact that that reporter is a well-regarded conservative journalist who also works for a high profile outlet is gravy.

If Thomas is the leak, that would be a shocking escalation from the justices normal tactics — and one which could have lasting consequences for the future. Appellate courts function because of the assumption that their members can openly discuss their thoughts and misgivings about individual cases without fear that those discussions will later be used to embarrass them. If that assumption no longer prevails in Supreme Court conferences, the Court will morph into a far less deliberative, more factional institution.

Yet Thomas has shown no indication in the past that he cares about the sanctity of institutions or the consequences of his actions. Thomas continually finds himself embroiled in ethics scandals, including a high-profile gifting scandal similar to the one that forced Justice Abe Fortas to resign from the bench in 1969. Thomas’ jurisprudence is equally reckless, as he would declare everything from national child labor laws to the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters unconstitutional.

If Thomas did leak the Court’s deliberations, that still leaves open who the second leaker is (Noam Scheiber makes a strong case that the second leak could be Justice Kennedy). At the moment, however, we know that Thomas is the justice who is most likely to cast long-established practices aside due to a personal crusade. And we know that he already has a good relationship with the reporter who received the Supreme leak.