Obamacare: Where Are We Now?

With Monday’s deadline for enrollment in 2014 approaching, Obamacare—sorry, former Speaker Pelosi, but that’s what it’s come to be known as—presents something of a paradox. After the disastrous problems early on with the federal online insurance market, HealthCare.gov, the sign-up process has gone much better than could have been expected a few months ago. But opinion polls show that a majority of Americans still oppose the health-care law. And many Democrats fear that, come November, it could cost them the Senate.

What is going on? First, the numbers. According to the latest figures from the White House, more than six million people have signed up for private insurance policies offered under the Affordable Care Act. Another three or four million low-income families have enrolled in the expanded Medicaid program, and, under a provision of the law introduced in 2010, about the same number of young people have been added to their parents’ private insurance plans. By the Monday deadline, the figures will likely be higher. On Thursday, 1.5 million people visited HealthCare.gov, and more than four hundred thousand people placed calls to the insurance exchange, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a tweet.

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