Unspinning the Enrollment Spin

The Hill’s Jonathan Easley has a nice roundup of the various numbers being bandied about on ♡bamaCare!!! enrollments:

Enrollments fell short of the 1.3 million HHS had projected for February.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokeswoman Julie Bataille said “projections are constantly changing,” and that the agency believes it’s “on the right trajectory” for March.

More than 4.2 million people have enrolled in ObamaCare as of March 1, HHS confirmed.

The number of people who have actually purchased coverage is likely significantly lower. Analysts estimate that as many as 20 percent of enrollees haven’t paid their first month’s premium, meaning that roughly 840,000 of that 4.2 million do not actually have insurance coverage.

The administration has also said it doesn’t know yet how many enrollees already had an insurance plan, and how many are obtaining coverage for the first time.

HHS didn’t “confirm” squat. They’re still basing their numbers on shopping cart clicks, and not on actual purchases from a website which still doesn’t have a functioning backend.

So what we know is that nobody knows how many have obtained coverage or whether they were previously insured. Or if the Administration knows, they aren’t saying. And if they aren’t saying, you can safely assume the real numbers aren’t nearly as good as the fake numbers, which aren’t nearly as good as the promises made four years ago.

You’re gonna need a bigger goalpost mover.