The Cuomo administration proudly announced Wednesday that more than 37,000 New Yorkers have signed up for ObamaCare.
What it didn’t announce was that two-thirds enrolled in the taxpayer-funded Medicaid program — not the private health-insurance exchanges.
Of the 37,030 new health-care enrollees, 23,717 actually joined Medicaid, the public health-insurance program for the needy that is 100 percent taxpayer subsidized.
Only 13,313 bought regular commercial insurance, officials said Wednesday.
“The early signs are not good. It’s the taxpayers picking up the tab for Medicaid,” said Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn), a member of the state Senate Health Committee. “If more young people don’t enroll in the program, ObamaCare is going to implode.”
Other states had an even more lopsided Medicaid-private insurance mix. In Washington state and Minnesota, 90 percent of new enrollees signed up for Medicaid, not regular insurance.
The rush to acquire a Medicaid card came as the federal government raised the income limit to $23,550 for a family of four.
Before the change, the maximum a family could earn in New York and still qualify was $18,330.
Assembly Health Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried (D-Manhattan) said uninsured residents who intended to buy into private plans realized when they entered their incomes that they had hit the jackpot and could get free Medicaid. The feds are picking up 100 percent of the cost of new Medicaid enrollees in the first three years of the program, tapering down to 90 percent by 2020.
Overall, the state Health Department reports that 174,000 people have completed the application process, the first step in signing up for medical care.
Meanwhile, the White House is considering tinkering with the open-enrollment period for ObamaCare to close a loophole that would slap a tax penalty on those who sign up too close to the March 31 deadline for their insurance to be in effect by then, said a Democratic Senate source.
The change would not delay the individual mandate to buy insurance or extend the open-enrollment period beyond March 31, the source said.
But the rethinking fueled speculation that President Obama might make bigger adjustments.