Ezra Klein Tries, Fails to Defend Enroll America

Ezra Klein Tries, Fails to Defend Enroll America

In a post today at his Washington Post blog, Ezra Klein attempts to defend Enroll America’s targeting of ten states–nine of which have GOP governors–as something other than a political ploy to use Obamacare exchanges to build Democratic political organizations in battleground states. 

Klein posts two maps, both of which show the percentage of uninsured residents by county according to different levels of poverty. The maps show a severe lack of health insurance among the relatively poor in parts of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, and Alaska.

Klein says that

these maps explain why you see a group like Enroll America focusing its work on 10 states, rather than sweeping out across the country. There are some areas of the United States, like the upper Midwest and the Northeast, that already have a relatively low uninsured rate. That likely explains why you see national groups focusing on a smaller area where they can likely have a larger impact, the places where uninsured rates for the poor hover as high as 40 percent.

Unfortunately for Klein, the fact is that Enroll America is focusing on states in the upper Midwest and the Northeast, including Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The other five states are in the South and Southwest, but only two–Texas and Florida–are among the most heavily uninsured states on Klein’s maps.

They also happen to be two of the most important swing states in presidential elections, and Texas in particular is the prime target of Democrat “red-to-blue” campaigns. Funny coincidence, that.

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