Obamacare enrollees are older and sicker than anticipated, former governor Howard Dean (D., Vt.) said on Fox News Sunday.
After Dean predicted that the controversial law would be “running a lot more smoothly” by March, Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute countered by pointing to enrollment data, which suggests an older, less healthy population is signing up for coverage, a dynamic many experts predict could put pressure on the health-insurance marketplace.
“When you look at the state-level data, what you see is a lot of people are signing up for more expensive plans,” which indicates a less healthy population, Gottlieb said.
Dean conceded that Gottlieb was “right about what he just said. The data does show that less healthy people are signing up; younger people are signing up less frequently than hoped.”
