Forget Grubergate. Forget repealing Obamacare. Forget being a cynical southern conservative no-no-no-man or woman.
Use what little math our public schools taught you and look at the numbers of the Affordable Care Act and TennCare.
According to a new University of Tennessee Center for Business and Economic Research study, the number of uninsured people in the Volunteer State has shrunk by nearly a quarter in the first year since the new health insurance marketplace launched under the Affordable Care Act.
A quarter! That's 25 percent of previously uninsured Tennesseans who are now insured. And this success happened in spite of all the tricks that Tennessee's conservative politicians could think up to derail the effort, including a backward and costly-to-taxpayers decision not to expand Tennessee's Medicaid program known as TennCare with federal money already being paid by all taxpayers.
Still, the success of the ACA in Tennessee brings the percentage of uninsured Tennesseans to its lowest level "in a decade," the University of Tennessee at Knoxville report released Monday found.
"It's a significant decline, but not necessarily unexpected given the implementation of the ACA this year," the report's co-author, Dr. LeAnn Luna, told Times Free Press reporter Kate Harrison Belz.
Last year, the university reported that of the state's 6.5 million residents, about 611,000 were uninsured -- a rate of about 9.6 percent. But over the course of one year, that rate fell 7.2 percent (or about to 472,000 people)-- the biggest single drop since the university began collecting such data 20 years ago, Belz wrote in Tuesday's paper. The report also shows that the rate of uninsured children fell from 3.7 percent to 2.4 percent -- a roughly 35 percent drop.
These new numbers mirror those that ACA outreach nonprofit Enroll America released last month: Tennessee's uninsured rate fell by 2 to 3 percentage points -- including 3 percent in Hamilton County -- in one year, said Jacob Flowers, Tennessee state director of Get Covered America. Meanwhile, the personal finance site WalletHub reported that Georgia's uninsured rate dropped by 3.5 percentage points since last year. Nationally the number of uninsured also is down, with about 10 million of the nation's previously uninsured people now covered.
Add to this that the program's costs remain below expectations, with average premium rises for next year well below historical rates of increase.
But there's more: A new Gallup survey finds that the newly insured are very satisfied with their coverage.
Yet perhaps the best-of-all, ACA seal of approval may be coming from one of the most conservative of all groups -- insurance companies -- the same ones that initially cried foul.
According to The New York Times, since the ACA was enacted in 2010, the program has evolved into a boon for the nation's largest private health plans and led to a profitable surge in their enrollments. That now makes them allies of the ACA and signals head-on conflicts for conservatives in Congress.
But don't kid yourselves or fall for conservative lines about ACA corporate welfare for big insurance. Remember that the ACA requires insurers to spend 80 percent of premium revenues to pay claims and to return whatever of that percent they don't spend on claims. Remember that only 20 percent of those ACA premiums can be used for administration and profit. This comes from a portion of the law aimed at keeping premiums reasonable.
Instead, realize that as more people join the insurance pool, get healthier by following preventive measures in the law, and file fewer claims, insurers revenues -- and, yes, premiums -- should stabilize.
What Obamacare -- originally Romneycare -- does for taxpayers should be equally beneficial: Offering a government subsidy to help low-income and previously uninsured people pay over time for health care coverage before they get sick is a good bit cheaper for us taxpayers than using only tax dollars to pay their health care bills after they get sick and sicker.
Like it or not, the ACA is a laudable accomplishment and a success -- even in Tennessee.