What surprises me isn’t that only six people reportedly enrolled in Obamacare on October 1. What surprises me is that anyone was able to sign up at all.
Excellent work, guys:
The federal government's new health care program got off to such a slow start that only six people successfully enrolled on its website the first day and only a few hundred had done so by the second day, documents released by Congress late Thursday show.
The documents, released by the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee, state that just 248 people had succeeded in enrolling on the HealthCare.Gov site by the end of the second day, Oct. 2.
The documents are notes prepared for the "war room" set up by the federal Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight to manage the problematic rollout of the website and enrollment for the new plans under the Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare.
The committee is investigating the problems.
Who are these six people? They deserve some sort of government medal, or something.
On a more serious note, however, the Obama administration will not release the official figures until mid-November. Smart politics. Even if they could release them earlier (and they certainly could) they shouldn’t. Why? Because I think it’s best to delay the “official” day of embarrassment for as long as possible. Meanwhile, if the House Oversight Committee is telling the American public that within the first 48 hours less than 250 people successfully signed up for health insurance on the federal exchanges, I’d venture to say the official numbers aren’t much better. What a stunning and crushing embarrassment for this administration. It seems Congressional Republicans have, finally, been vindicated.