If at first you don't succeed, lower your expectations...or something like that.
The Congressional Budget Office is apparently taking that train of thought, as it has once again lowered the 2015 expectations for Obamacare enrollment from 13 million to just 9.9 million, in what is being called by CNN Money as a "significant" drop.
Obamacare has had trouble reaching enrollment expectations, and has been dogged with a non-functional website, lawsuits regarding eligible subsidies, and consumers not actually paying premiums.
Obamacare surpassed its target for 2014, but only after the CBO lowered its projection to 6 million enrollees because of the exchanges' troubled opening last fall.
Some 7.1 million Americans were enrolled in health plans as of mid-October, officials said Monday. That's down from the 8.1 million that had originally signed up. Some never paid their premiums to complete enrollment, some got jobs that provide healthcare and some did not provide sufficient proof of citizenship.
Now I'll give a bit of wiggle room for the botched website launch, but it's been well over a year and the law is nowhere close to reaching its target of 25 million people in 2017. This is yet another embarrassing failure for the Obama administration.
It's foolish to proclaim that goals have been met when the "goals" are simply lowered expectations in an effort to make it appear that something has actually happened.
2015 enrollment will begin on Nov. 15 and will continue through Feb. 15.
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