Peter Suderman on the Obamacare Sign-Up Scam

On
September 30, the day before the launch of Obamacare’s health
insurance exchanges, NBC News asked Health and Human Services
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius what success would look like for the
law and its system of government-run insurance portals. “Well, I
think success looks like at least seven million people having
signed up by the end of March 2014,” she said in
response.

In the months before the exchanges went (sort of) live, this was
a standard answer from the administration. It was based on the
Congressional Budget Office’s projection of how many people would
sign up for private coverage through the law in 2014, and the
administration repeatedly pointed to the figure as an achievable
enrollment target for the first year.

But with the release of another round of official Obamacare
sign-up data yesterday, it looks rather unlikely that the
administration’s stated goal will be met. In response, the
administration has revised its definition of success in hopes of
papering over the law’s ongoing failures.

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