EPIC FAIL: LESS THAN 0.02% OF AMERICAN HAS SIGNED UP FOR OBAMACARE
Melissa Melton
According to a report yesterday by the Wall Street Journal, two sources privy to official government info have confirmed that less than 50,000 and as few as 40,000 people actually signed up for Obamacare through the $600-million epic fail that was Healthcare.gov in the last month.
That’s only 8-10% of the government’s projected figure. Supposedly 700,000 applications have been received through all methods including mostly offline from all 50 states as of last week. Of course, on the first day the website was live, only six people — that’s right, six out of the 314 million people in this country — had successfully signed up for their shiny new health insurance plan created in backroom, off-the-record deals between the insurance companies, Big Pharma and our government that is the resultant magic and wonder of… Obamacare.
The report comes out ahead of the government’s planned release of Obamacare enrollment figures this week. But don’t get too excited and start jumping up and down with sheer joy just yet; this isn’t exactly the Administration well-known for its transparency or anything (that last part was supposed to be a cute throw-away line about the least-transparent Administration in America’s history, sorry, you probably aren’t laughing).
Apparently when the government releases its Healthcare.gov figures report, the definition of ‘enrollee’ will be enhanced for maximum Obamacare sparkliness:
Health insurance plans only count subscribers as enrolled in a health plan once they’ve submited[sic] 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. (source)
So, when it comes to the definition of Obamacare ‘enrollee’, there’s no real standard of people giving their information to Healthcare.gov and it resulting in them successfully walking away with an actual health insurance plan whatsoever.
It’s not the part about not limiting the count to people who have actually submitted a bona fide payment to their new health insurance provider that adds insult to injury here.
It’s the part where the definition of ‘enrollment’ will be magically enhanced — changed to the bare bones of anyone who has filled out an application and selected a plan. It didn’t specify if that application has to be completed properly or even completed at all.
That’s it. Considering the complete box of utter fail the Obamacare website is, that doesn’t mean jack.
The Healthcare.gov website was replete with screw ups that even armchair web designers don’t make, to the point of Monty Python-esque absurdity, such as not even being able to give even basic correct information about the insurance plans we are all supposed to be buying, duplicate enrollment issues (that’ll do wonders for legitimate enrollment numbers!), spouses being reported as children (each child will surely count as an enrollee too, no matter how many children the system falsely assigns you)…the list goes on and on (and on…did I mention “and on?” P.S. — and on).
No matter; whatever number the government releases, you can be sure they probably got it the same way Miley Cyrus was able to grab news headlines this week. That is, by smoking a joint and twerking in a dwarf’s face at the European MTV music awards.
So, just like the government’s unemployment figures never counting all those people who have fallen out of the workplace altogether for various reasons (like finally giving up already because we live in a country where only 47% of the adults even have a full-time job at this point), these figures will be all spiced up with fairy sprinkles and unicorn farts and, like everything else that comes out of the Obama Administration’s mouth, it won’t be worth the paper the Federal Reserve prints its bogus fiat Monopoly money on.
As Reason.com put it:
“The rare early success story” of Obamacare is that a massively expensive program that doesn’t actually accomplish its core objective has jacked up the number of people enrolled in it. So break out the champagne because Medicaid is booming? We really can’t afford to do that now and will be even less likely in a few years.
In the meantime, be sure to visit My Cancellation.com, where you can read letter after letter after letter sent to angry, bitter Americans who have either had their premiums raised in some cases 167%, or had their insurance plan cancelled altogether because it doesn’t meet the Obamacare standard of providing maternity care to single men and other completely ridiculous, useless features that serve no purpose but to spike rates (and make our Health and Human Services secretary look like a complete moron when congresspeople have to explain the basic biology of human birth to her in congressional testimony).
Don’t worry though; the government promises they’ll fix the Obamacare website just like Obama promised at least 36 times that if you liked your health insurance plan, you’d get to keep it. (Good thing Tennessee Senator Brian Kelsey gave Sebelius that Web Sites for Dummies book.)
Never mind that most people wouldn’t even trust the government to make a noodle salad at this point, let alone possess the ability to effectively oversee a large part of the nation’s health insurance.
Well, as Senator Harry Reid said, this is all headed toward a single-payer system where the government completely controls the one and only payment mechanism for all healthcare anyway. Surely most Americans are just beside themselves waiting for the government to have even more control over health care in this country, as it really has been a blast so far.
And by the way, the government still fully expects some 7 million Americans to sign up for their healthcare through the Affordable Care Act exchanges by the end of the year, but they’ve been gracious enough to give us a six-week extension on paying our oh-so-constitutional Obamacare fines if we don’t.
Yay.
Melissa Melton is a writer, researcher, and analyst for The Daily Sheeple, where this first appeared,