The administration is trumpeting this as a Big Win..
RT this–>FACT: Nearly a half million #Obamacare applications have been filed: http://t.co/brbc34mIvd
— HHS.gov (@HHSGov) October 20, 2013
…but won’t say how many have actually obtained insurance
(ABC News) Last week, President Barack Obama gathered some of his top advisers in the Oval Office to discuss the problem-plagued rollout of his health care legislation. He told his team the administration had to own up to the fact that there were no excuses for not having the health care website ready to operate on Day One.
The admonition from a frustrated president came amid the embarrassing start to sign-ups for the health care insurance exchanges. The president is expected to address the cascade of computer problems Monday during an event at the White House.
Oh, good, another campaign event, we’re he’ll surely engage in some Blamestorming of Republicans for the problems.
Administration officials say more than 476,000 health insurance applications have been filed through federal and state exchanges. The figures mark the most detailed measure yet of the problem-plagued rollout of the insurance market place.
However, the officials continue to refuse to say how many people have actually enrolled in the insurance markets. And without enrollment figures, it’s unclear whether the program is on track to reach the 7 million people projected by the Congressional Budget Office to gain coverage during the six-month sign-up period.
If the numbers were great, you know they’d be trumpeting them. And, look, we all knew that once the ACA marketplaces were open, people would sign up. Heck, under the law, they have to, or they’ll be fine/taxed. And many do want affordable health insurance (not that most will be able to get it, especially considering the out of pocket costs). The Politico makes a good point
“It strikes me as a very positive number, especially given how hard it was to get through the process on healthcare.gov and in some states. Presumably it would have been far higher if not for glitches and hiccups,†said Larry Levitt, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
But he cautioned, “scorekeepers have always expected that early enrollees would be those who are sickest and most expensive, since they’ve been excluded from insurance until now. That is likely even more true given how hard the application process has been so far. It will be important to get the websites working smoothly to entice the young and healthy fence-sitters.â€
Without the healthy, especially the young and healthy, enrolling, the system collapses under the ever growing weight of massive costs to the insurers and government.
And, over 80% of that number are signed up for Medicaid or Medicare. Very few have signed up for the Exchange actually. And most of those that have are subsidized by the minority who aren’t.