After a month and a half of waiting, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius has released the official Obamacare enrollment numbers on behalf of the White House. The grand total? 106,185 people have signed up. The White House projected 494,620 people would be enrolled at this point.
Marketplace plan selection of 106,185 is 1.5 percent of the estimated enrollees at the end of the 2014 open enrollment period (Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate, May 2013). (See Appendix C for more information on enrollment experiences in other programs.)
To date, 106,185 persons have enrolled and selected a Marketplace plan—this includes those who have paid a premium and those who have not yet paid a premium.
Federal exchange enrollment amounts to roughly 23 people per day per state.
— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) November 13, 2013
Keep in mind that the definition of "enrolled" according to the Obama adminstration is the following:
It [enrollment] will count people who have purchased a plan as well as those who have a plan sitting in their online shopping cart but have not yet paid.
“In the data that will be released this week, ‘enrollment’ will measure people who have filled out an application and selected a qualified health plan in the marketplace,” said an administration official, who requested anonymity to frankly describe the methodology.
For some perspective, 7,000,000 people have lost the health insurance they previously had thanks to Obamacare.
For every American who got Obama care coverage in October, more than 180 people lost the health plan that Obama promised they could keep.
— Bill Hobbs (@billhobbs) November 13, 2013
UPDATE: Only 26,794 of Obamacare enrollments came through the federal exchange. The rest, 79,000+ have received their coverage through state exchanges. Here is a state-by-state breakdown of the number of people who have enrolled through the federal exchange.
UPDATE II: In a conference call with reporters, Sebelius said, "The marketplace is working," and "We can reasonably expect these numbers will grow substantially over the next five months."
UPDATE III: Naturally, the HHS enrollment site where official numbers are posted, has crashed.
This post has been updated.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member