Two CNNs In One

“CNN: Obamacare Enrollment Numbers ‘Complete Disaster,'” as spotted by Michael Warren of the Weekly Standard:

The federal health insurance exchange website created by Obamacare has been a “complete disaster” said CNN analyst Gloria Borger. Speaking on Jake Tapper’s program Wednesday afternoon, Borger was asked to respond to the enrollment numbers released by the administration following the first month of healthcare.gov and the several state-run exchanges across the country.

A total of 106,185 people signed up for new health insurance plans, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, and only 26,794 people were able enroll through the federal website.

“Healthcare.gov has been a complete disaster for the administration,” said Borger. “It’s clear they’ve been lowballing what to expect, and I’m not quite sure they lowballed it enough.”

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And as Ace notes, that 26,794 number is itself possibly spin:

Oops: My bad. That “less than 27,000” isn’t even the number of people who enrolled in Obamacare on the federal website. It’s still the number of people who have “picked a plan” on the federal website.

HealthCare.gov has performed even worse than expected. Fewer than 27,000 people selected a plan through the website, compared with roughly 79,000 who picked a plan through the 15 state-based insurance exchanges. Unofficial estimates leaked earlier this week suggested the federal website had done slightly better.

Their claim is that 106,185 people have enrolled in Obamacare, in October.

But remember, they previously announced their intention to, get this, lie about the numbers, by including people who hadn’t actually enrolled in anything — but had simply gotten to the stage where they picked a policy (but did not actually enroll in it). [Update: Related thoughts on that here — Ed]

As you know, they were expecting around 492,000 enrollments in October.

On the other hand, for CNN’s in-house medical “expert,” Dr. Sanjay Gupta, it’s all good:

Gupta explained why some should be glad to lose their health plans:

“You know, Piers, you and I have talked about this before after I interviewed Secretary Sebelius, you know, the number one cause of bankruptcy in United States is medical bills. And a large part of that is because there are really bad plans out there.”

And he compared ObamaCare to a ‘Ferrari’:

“But we have regulations for cars that are unsafe. People say, ‘I want to keep my Pinto. I don’t want to be forced to buy a Ferrari.’ Pintos were the cars that, you know, caught on fire if they got rear ended. Those weren’t safe cars. And, you know, if they want to keep that analogy going there are plans out there that are just aren’t very good plans.”

Gupta said the same thing two weeks ago, that ObamaCare nixing millions of health plans just “hasn’t been explained very well.” It wasn’t a “lie” or a “false promise,” but poor messaging. In 2009, Gupta was a top candidate to be Obama’s Surgeon General. That might explain his White House reasoning.

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Why would a runner-up Obama official compare Obamacare to a Ferrari (rarely anyone’s definition of a “safe car”), when the White House’s stated goal was to jack gasoline prices sky-high, and Obama’s ‘Science’ ‘Czar’ has floated mad Dr. Strangelove-esque schemes (strategies so outlandish, even Al Gore has called these techniques “completely nuts”) to fight the horrors of global warming he imagines are ravishing the earth?

Heck, why would a Time-Warner-CNN-HBO employee use that analogy?

But in any case, this cake has been baked: Time-Warner-CNN-HBO is a de facto propaganda wing of the Obama Administration. They should be held as accountable for ObamaCare as the president himself.

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Related: Something to file away as we get closer to 2016: in 2007, Hillary also floated “if you like your plan you can keep your plan”-style language, which should now be presumed to be as big a lie as her future boss’s “incorrect promises:”

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Update: Hey good news! 4.2 million have lost their health insurance so far due to Obamacare. 100,000 have allegedly signed up. So only 4.1 million have lost their coverage. I’m sure in at least Harry Reid’s worldview, that counts as good news, right?

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More: Throw another million policies on the barbie! According to Avik Roy of Forbes’ “Obamacare Exchange Scorecard: Around 100,000 Enrollees And Five Million Cancellations.”

I’m sure Harry still thinks that’s really good though, right?

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