I wonder how long it took them to dream this one up

[Adam]

Haven't bought any insurance? Don't worry, you might still be counted as "enrolled"

Let's say you're browsing Amazon. You've set up a username and password, and you're looking at ...oh, I don't know, a set of steak knives. You throw a hundred dollar set of Wustofs in your shopping cart, but before you checkout you think "I don't need knives this expensive. Forget it." You close your browser without purchasing anything and you go on with your day.

Well, according to the Obama administration, congratulations are in order. You just bought a very nice set of steak knives. At least, that's the way it's going to work when they release their Obamacare enrollment numbers.

In an effort to make their dismal Obamacare signup numbers look at least a little less apocalyptic, the Obama administration has altered the definition of what it means to "enroll." According to the Washington Post, you no longer need to have purchased anything in order to qualify as an Obamacare enrollee.

Health insurance plans only count subscribers as enrolled in a health plan once they’ve submitted a payment. That is when the carrier sends out a member card and begins paying doctor bills.

When the Obama administration releases health law enrollment figures later this week, though, it will use a more expansive definition. It will count people who have purchased a plan as well as those who have a plan sitting in their online shopping cart but have not yet paid.

“In the data that will be released this week, ‘enrollment’ will measure people who have filled out an application and selected a qualified health plan in the marketplace,” said an administration official, who requested anonymity to frankly describe the methodology.

WaPo link.






Really?

Good grief. Well, I suppose they have to try to come up with something so that they don't admit that this has been (and always will be) a monumental failure.

[scott]

Of course they'd do that. It's the same logic behind jobs created or saved.

It's amazing that the DMV comparison to this new healthcare system is inaccurate, but only because it's much much less effective.

[Adam]

HHS today announced that one tenth of one percent of the United States has "selected a plan".



And now those transparent chickens begin to come home to roost:

But amid the rush to enroll as many people as possible by the Dec. 23 deadline, there’s a huge caveat that isn’t getting much public attention: In order for coverage to take effect on Jan. 1, enrollees must pay their first month’s premium on time. (The deadline varies somewhat by state and by insurer.)

That’s slow going, according to consultants and some insurers, raising the prospect that actual enrollment will be far lower than the figures HHS is releasing.

“There is also a lot of worrying going on over people making payments,” industry consultant Robert Laszewski wrote in an email. “One client reports only 15% have paid so far. It is still too early to know for sure what this means but we should expect some enrollment slippage come the payment due date.”

Another consultant Kip Piper, agreed. “So far I’m hearing from health plans that around 5% and 10% of consumers who have made it through the data transfer gauntlet have paid first month’s premium and therefore truly enrolled,” he wrote me.

So, with CNN only seeing 20% of people actually getting insurance, and that looks pretty optimistic at best, we're actually seeing something like 80,000 people who have actually gotten health insurance, and perhaps as low as less than 20,000.


So, we were promised by The Most Transparent Administration In Historyâ„¢ that the reason that hindenburg.gov crashed immediately was because fifty million people wanted Obamafail so badly that they all went rushing to it. Now, ten weeks later, they have 39 million visitors, which doubtless includes millions of hits that CNN has given them trying to get on the site to prove how well it works, not even 1.2 million have even selected some sort of plan OR taken the freebie option of Medicaid, and of all of those, there's less than a football stadium's worth of people who have actually signed up for Obamafail.




What happened to all of those fifty million Americans who were dying because they didn't have health insurance? Seems pretty clear to me that this was a ludicrously inflated number, just like we said it was way back in 2006 and going forward.

[Lanie]

WaPo link.






Really?

Good grief. Well, I suppose they have to try to come up with something so that they don't admit that this has been (and always will be) a monumental failure.

This gives poor people who don't qualify an out.