Democrats have suffered damage from the Affordable Care Act far more from negative press than actual negative results. Of course they make the problem far worse by running away as opposed to standing up for the successes of the Affordable Care Act. Two stories last fall did the most harm–the failed roll out and news of people receiving cancellation letters. The computer problems were IT issues which have nothing to do with the benefits of the Affordable Care Act as policy. Now that we have some data on enrollment, we know that the initial IT problems did not decrease enrollment at all from initial projections. We also now know that most of the people who received cancellation letters received alternate coverage, frequently from the same company, with better coverage at a lower price.

Bad news tends to lead to more bad news but good news often leads to more good news, and hopefully the Democrats will show the ability to capitalize on it. Republicans who made claims of Obamacare leading to fewer people having coverage or failing to meet projections look as foolish as the Republicans who ignored the polls and projected a Romney victory in 2012. Instead of negative stories, we are seeing stories such as this from Politico: Obamacare critics: Homina, homina, homina:

Back in the fall, conservatives seized on the flubbed Obamacare rollout as proof that President Barack Obama’s brand of liberalism doesn’t work.

Now, the law’s opponents aren’t about to say that critique was wrong — but they’ve lost the best evidence they had.

On Tuesday, Obamacare sign-ups passed 7 million, six months after the launch of a federal website that could barely sign up anybody. There are still a lot of questions about how solid that figure is, but the idea that the law could even come close to the original goal after such a disastrous start would have been laughable even a few weeks ago.

It was also a wake-up call for Republicans and conservatives, and even the occasional liberal, who pushed the argument that the failed website challenges the idea at the heart of Obama’s agenda — that government can still solve big social problems.

Of course Fox and other right wing outlets are still running negative headlines, but otherwise success is leading to the rest of the media being more positive. While conservatives spread false stories of Obamacare nightmares, there are more stories on those who benefit under the Affordable Care Act. The New York Times has pointed out that many people have purchased insurance directly from insurance companies in addition to the over seven million purchasing through the exchanges:

Millions of newly insured people are hiding in plain sight.

They are the people who have bought new health insurance since the start of this year but have chosen for one reason or another to bypass the state and federal exchanges that opened last year under the Affordable Care Act. While the exact number is unknown, some health care experts estimate that it may be in the millions.

Politicians and policy makers have focused on the number of people who signed up through the exchanges — at nearly seven million and counting a day after the March 31 deadline — but they have largely overlooked the group that did not use the exchanges, even though it could have a major impact on the program’s financial success in the years ahead…

All individual health insurance plans offered after Jan. 1 must adhere to several new requirements, regardless of whether they are bought through the marketplaces. Insurers must offer more comprehensive coverage and charge healthy and sick people the same rates. And they can no longer turn people away if they have existing medical conditions.

It makes little difference to insurers how the new customers arrive at their door: What matters most is that they get there. Insurers must bring in enough new customers, including a significant number of healthy ones, to offset the higher costs of complying with the law.

Aaron Billger, a spokesman for Highmark, an insurer that offers plans in Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, said about 30 percent of the approximately 133,000 members that Highmark had enrolled as of mid-March had signed up outside the marketplaces. The large insurer WellPoint, which has said it expects to enroll about one million customers nationwide in new plans, has reported that about 20 percent of its sign-ups have occurred off the exchanges.

Some people are saving money by purchasing insurance from co-ops which are being set up in some states thanks to the Affordable Care Act as an alternative to the large insurance companies. It is too soon to tell whether they will really lower costs, but they do sound like a promising alternative:

The names of the big health insurance companies are familiar – Blue Cross, Aetna, United Healthcare. But what about CoOportunity Health, or Health Republic Insurance of New York?  These are among 23 new health insurance companies that started under the Affordable Care Act.  They’re all nonprofit, member-owned cooperatives, and the aim is to create more competition and drive prices down…

“In some states, co-ops are dominating the marketplace, with 80 percent of the enrollees going to the co-op,” he says.

That’s in Maine. Morrison says most co-ops are very happy with their enrollment numbers. Their rates are often the lowest available through an exchange.

“The co-op states have 8.4 percent lower premiums on average than the non-co-op states, across the marketplace,” says Morrison. “So co-ops are creating that competition. They’re keeping rates down in the states they’re operating in.”

The Los Angeles Times told the story of a cancer patient who benefited from Obamacare:

Robertson wrote a passionate account of his cancer and posted it on the White House website to illustrate how important insurance is even for younger people. Noting that he had paid just 1% of the $900,000 cost for five surgeries, radiation and chemo, he wrote, “Without that, I would have bankrupted my family just to stay alive.”

And without Obamacare’s guarantee that he could buy affordable insurance despite his preexisting medical condition, he wrote, “there’s no telling what life would have been like for us moving forward.”