Is Obamacare working?--Not very well

Ed Rogers:

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Substantively, the administration is refusing to acknowledge a few essential points. One, the original definition of “success” — the CBO number they adopted as their own —was 7 million enrollees. And next, an estimated 20 percent of the alleged 6 million enrollees have not paid their premiums, which means they do not actually have insurance. That leaves us with 4.8 million enrollees at best, without discounting duplicate enrollments, unfinished applications and any other factors that would diminish the number who have actually signed up for Obamacare.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius continues to stonewall Congress and to claim that HHS does not know how many people have paid their premiums. In response, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) wrote her a letter saying, “We have recently obtained information that suggests your most recent testimony before the Ways and Means Committee was at best evasive and perhaps misleading.” (Camp and Brady are such gentlemen.) The letter continued, “Insurers are submitting information to CMS about who has effectuated their enrollment, i.e. who has paid their premium. Please provide this information in its most updated form immediately.” In other words, the administration has the data but doesn’t want to release it because it would derail their narrative that Obamacare has reached a point where something meaningful has happened.

But, oh, by the way, the most stunning omission from the White House, Sebelius, et. al. is that Obamacare has failed miserably in its original purpose — insuring the uninsured. President Obama and his Democratic allies can claim that 6 million people have gotten insurance, but we still don’t know how many of those are newly insured.

Regardless of the number of enrollees, or the number of people who are receiving subsidies, or how many people are able to keep their doctor, the bottom line is that Obamacare’s success should be based on the number of people who have insurance today who were uninsured before Obamacare was passed. Of course, that’s not something the administration will even admit they are tracking. What does that tell you? After all the insurance cancellations, the administration’s insistence that 6 million people now have insurance because of Obamacare is a lot like firing 20 people, hiring 18 of them back and claiming that you have created 18 new jobs. In other words, nobody knows what the net number of people insured is once you have factored in how many people lost their insurance because of Obamacare.
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I would not be surprised to learn that fewer people actually have healthcare they are happy with now than before this hot mess was passed.  That is a poll question you are unlikely to see asked at this point.  For those who are not getting someone else to pay for their healthcare, they find themselves paying more for less.  The premiums are higher and the deductibles or unrealistic.  Those who think this monstrosity is working are ignoring the facts.