The Obama administration did its best to inflate the number of ObamaCare enrollees yesterday, but it’s clear even the administration’s most vigorous efforts have fallen painfully short.
The
initial announcement made at 3:30 p.m. EST
revealed that 106,185 people nationwide had “selected” an ObamaCare health
insurance plan. The word “selected” is critical here, because the administration
was forced to admit the figure includes people who have signed up for the plan,
but have yet to pay for their premiums. At the House Oversight Committee hearing
on ObamaCare yesterday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) forced White House Chief
Technology Officer Todd Park to reveal the folly of the administration’s
position. “Have you ever shopped on Amazon.com? Chaffetz asked. “Yes sir,” he replied.
“When you put something in your shopping cart, is that considered a sale?”
Chaffetz continued. “No,” replied Park.
Indeed, the
situation remains desperate with Healthcare.gov website. Of the more than
100,000 enrollees who have selected a health plan, only 26,794 of them were able
to do so on the federal website, despite the reality it is used by 34 states. By
comparison, the 16 state-run exchanges (plus the District of Columbia)
garnered 79,391 enrollees. Thus, the signup rate at the federal website averaged
a meager 744 enrollees per state. That’s a remarkably modest number for a
website that has cost the taxpayers more than $600 million and counting.
Modesty
aside, the total number of enrollees must be measured against the reality that
as of mid-November, 4.8
million Americans have had their health insurance
plans cancelled. That number is expected to rise exponentially. Depending
on the source, the number of policies that will be cancelled ranges from 52
million, to as high as 93
million.
Administration officials tried
to put a happy face on this ongoing debacle, noting that 975,407
applications out 1,081,582 eligible people made it through the enrollment
process, but have yet to select a plan. They further noted that the state and
federal exchanges had received 26,876,527 unique visitors. HHS Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius contends this shows how interested people are. ”Even with the
issues we’ve had, the marketplace is working, and people are enrolling,” she
said. “As more people shop and talk things over with their families, we expect
these numbers to rise.” Someone less optimistic might find the minuscule level
of actual signups compared to the browsers troubling, especially given the
horrifying numbers of Americans losing their health insurance every day.
Equally troubling is the reality that 396,261 people have been determined as being eligible for Medicaid. They will be enrolled in that plan as of January 1, 2014. Thus, the number of Americans who have selected a private health insurance policy that they will pay for mostly or completely by themselves, (depending on their eligibility for a subsidy) has been dwarfed by the number who are guaranteed to participate in “free” government-run insurance.
One’s
eligibility for subsidies became a hot topic this week, courtesy of James
O’Keefe’s Project Veritas. ObamaCare navigators at the National Urban League’s
offices in Dallas were secretly videotaped advising
enrollees how to game the system. One person was fired and
three were suspended after the video was made public. The Urban League disavowed
their behavior, but insisted that undercover applicants were speaking to were
navigators-in-training and “the full context of these comments is not reflected
in the video.”
Regardless,
the video underscored the perilous reality revealed during last week’s Senate
hearing. Under questioning by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Sebelius was forced to
admit there is no federal requirement mandating that navigators undergo a
criminal background check, and that it was entirely possible a convicted felon
could be hired to obtain sensitive personal information required to sign up for
a plan.
Unsurprisingly, the political
recriminations are ramping up in earnest. Former President Bill Clinton piled
on Obama regarding his bald-faced lie that Americans who like their
insurance plan could keep it. Clinton said Obama should keep his promise. ”So I
personally believe, even if it takes a change to the law, the president should
honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them
keep what they got,” Clinton said. According to White House Press Secretary Jay
Carney, Obama was on
board with the idea.
That’s a
remarkable turnaround for a White House that has waged a steady campaign against
“bad apple” insurance companies responsible for saddling Americans with
“substandard” insurance plans.
It is also a
pipe dream. As Jonathan Gruber, one of the authors of the Massachusetts health
plan and an MIT economics professor, explains in an email, Obama
is “just reacting to one broken promise by imposing a much larger and harmful
one: our promise to insurers that if they priced fairly, we would deliver a
broad pool of insured. If you allow the healthy enrollees to stay out in their
old policy, the insurers lose money and the program falls apart.” Robert
Laszewski, a health insurance industry consultant at Health Policy and Strategy
Associates, echoes the futility of such an idea. “You just can’t send tens of
thousands or hundreds of thousands of ‘never mind’ letters out to policyholders
on, maybe, a month’s notice,” he explains. “So an executive order to change the
regs would be like putting Humpty Dumpty back together.”
Unfortunately for Obama, Bill
Clinton isn’t the only Democrat looking for a way out. Yesterday House
Democrats handed the
president a Friday deadline with regard to a fix-it-or-else ultimatum. That’s
because Friday is when Republicans will be calling a vote on a proposal offered
by Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) to extend Americans’ existing insurance policies for a
year. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney ripped Upton’s
bill, even as he acknowledged that Obama has yet to come up with an alternative
plan. Carney’s pronouncement was preceded by the ominous revelation that House
Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) was “not closed to the option” of voting in
favor of Upton’s proposal. Other House Democrats are apparently less
wishy-washy. “There will be defections,” a House Democratic leadership aide contended.
In other words, for the first time since ObamaCare was passed, some level of bipartisanship, no matter how ironic the context, may be achieved.
If it is,
the president has no one to blame but himself. As bad as the rollout of the
website has been, it was Obama himself who betrayed the trust of the American
public. The devastating results contained in a new Quinnipiac poll taken
Tuesday underscore that reality. Only 39 percent of Americans approve of the job
he is doing over all, and 52 percent no longer believe he is honest or
trustworthy. Moreover, a whopping 73 percent of those polled want ObamaCare
postponed–while a paltry 19 percent believe it will improve the U.S. healthcare
system.
At
yesterday’s House hearing, Todd Park did his best to parse the language with
regard to the website. When asked if the site would be working by the
administration’s promised deadline of November 30, Park said the
team tasked with repairing it “is working incredibly hard to meet that goal.”
Jay Carney was equally imprecise, telling reporters that healthcare.gov is ”on track” and will be
working smoothly for the “vast majority” of consumers by the deadline. For the
vast number of Americans whose lives have been thrown into turmoil by this
entire fiasco, such transparent hedging is insulting. When it comes to peoples’
healthcare, “almost” isn’t remotely good enough.
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