Just a Little Bit of Obamacare Schadenfreude

A poor day for Obamacare Schadenfreude, but a nice day here in Southern Maryland.  Sunny, warmish. let me get this over with quickly, so I can go enjoy it.

Two of the articles to cite today have to do with the Administration touting the 7.1 million enrollments. As they say, "figures don't lie, but liars figure."

First, from Reason Magazine: Obamacare's Bogus Enrollment Claims

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected in February that the ACA would slash the nation’s 48 million–strong uninsured population by 13 million. (This was scaled back from its previous projection of 19 million, as The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein notes.) But the ACA is not close to hitting even that more-modest target.

Consider how its three main mechanisms for extending coverage have fared.

First off, the exchanges: The seven million enrollment figure that the administration is bandying about is misleading. The actual number of uninsured covered by the marketplace will be much smaller. For starters, if the current trend continues, 20 percent of the seven million will drop out without paying. Out of the remaining 5.6 million, only about half were likely previously uninsured. Why? Because reliable early surveys found that a whopping 65 to 90 percent of those flocking to the exchange already had insurance. Even assuming that uninsured people were waiting until the end to sign up, it is hard to see how that figure would exceed 50 percent, given that six out of 10 uninsured people surveyed by the Kaiser Family Foundation recently didn’t know about the March 31 deadline and after being told about it, half of them still planned to remain uninsured.

Second, Medicaid. The administration claims that the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid has allowed four million to 4.5 million uninsured people to gain coverage. But a substantial portion of that stems from regular Medicaid growth (unrelated to Obamacare). In January, Real Clear Politics’ Sean Trende estimated the number to be closer to 400,000, although he expected things to improve as the sign-up deadline approached. And last month, Avalere, a health advisory company, put the new enrollees due to Obamacare at 2.4 million to 3.5 million. (Some states are reporting higher rates of uninsured Medicaid enrollment, but it is unclear how representative or reliable they are or how many of these uninsured might have been covered even under the old eligibility criteria.)

Third, the provision that allows 26-year-olds to stay on their parents’ plans. The administration claims that this provision has extended coverage to three million young people. But that’s a false assumption, given that at least some portion of them are college students with university coverage or self-employed with insurance from the individual market. Forbes’ Avik Roy estimates that the real figure is closer to 890,000, meaning that the administration’s figure represents an over 200 percent exaggeration.

All of this adds up to less than seven million uninsured being covered by Obamacare, which means that the program fell 46 percent short of CBO’s 13 million mark.

Even Washington Post's Fact Inventor Check, Glenn Kessler comes to similar conclusions: CBO’s Obamacare estimate: it’s more complicated than you think

Many reporters and politicians have assumed that this meant that CBO predicted that 6 million would be enrolled in the exchanges (and separately an additional 8 million in Medicaid) when the enrollment period ended on March 31. Indeed, on Sept. 5, 2013, Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, sent Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius a memo titled, “Projected Monthly Enrollment Targets for Health Insurance Marketplaces in 2014.” That document laid out month-by-month enrollment targets, culminating in 7 million by March 31.

But that’s not really what the CBO estimate says. CBO provided a calendar-year estimate, meaning that the equivalent of 6 million people would be enrolled for an entire year. So each of those 3 million or so people who signed up for coverage in the past few weeks would really only count as two-thirds a person, for calendar-year purposes. (That translates to 2 million people over a calendar year.) People who only were on an exchange health plan for a month, and then either stopped paying or got a job that provided health insurance, would count as 1/12 calendar year.

Given that only about 2.25 million people signed up by Dec. 31, and thus in theory would have coverage for the whole year, you can see why CBO lowered its estimate. When all is said and done, the administration might just meet CBO’s revised estimate of 6 million people enrolled for the 2014 calendar year. Our rough guess is that, as it stands now, it will turn out to be about 5.5 6 million people over the calendar year, assuming everyone who signs up actually make a payment. That’s obviously a big assumption, but the tally could also be affected by last-minute sign-ups and “life events” such as marriage or leaving a job, which allows a person to buy insurance on the exchanges after the open-enrollment period ends.

According to the Post's Dan Balz, it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings:  Can Democrats change the politics of health care?

The president asserted that the debate over repealing the law is now over. Republicans dissent, but there’s little question that the GOP’s goal of dismantling the law becomes increasingly difficult. For Obama and the Democrats, however, that also will mean that when problems arise in the health-care system, whether involving cost or coverage, critics will blame them — fairly or not — for the law’s complexity and the clumsy hand of government.

The substantive debate ahead will challenge Republicans most. Democrats contend that the progress that has been made in signing up so many people will force Republicans to temper their message of repeal and instead focus their energies on changes in the law. Outright repeal, they argue, is not only unrealistic, particularly as long as a Democrat is in the White House, but less and less appealing politically.

HHS Pads Obamacare Numbers By Starting Applications

Wonder how Obamacare managed to sign up over two million new applicants in the final days before the deadline when it took months to get to 5 million?  Simple. They just started your Obamacare applications themselves. From The Shark Tank via Gateway Pundit:

In the closing days of the open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) , the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was mailing out letters notifying certain Americans that they had already started a healthcare coverage application on their behalf.

The HHS letter stated that the information they used to begin the application for individual Healthcare was obtain by the state agency in charge of implementing Obamacare.

The Administration is claiming, so far, 7.1 million have signed up for Obamacare. They cannot (or will not) specify how many are illegals, how many signed up to replace lost policies, how many have actually paid any premiums, or even how many have completed the application process.

What we do know is that 4 out of every 5 people who signed up for Obamacare qualify for subsidies.

UPDATE: Insurance Companies may refuse to sell health coverage beyond government mandated enrollment periods.

UPDATE II: Some new enrollees are prison inmates. States are signing them up so costs can be pass to federal government (i.e. the US tax payers).

If true, and they padded the number of signups by counting people who hadn't yet raised pen to paper (or fingers to keyboards) to signup, how many of those do you think will make it through the process, and actually become enrolled?

Patterico catches L.A. Times Micheal Hiltzik beating a scarecrow to death with lies...

Even This Diehard ObamaCare Opponent Is Not Sure Obama Is Acting Illegally in Unilaterally Delaying Provisions of the Law!
Patterico has been on the L.A. Times case for years.