Obamacare Enrollment Numbers Will Be “Very Low,” According to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

We’ll finally get a look at
some official enrollment numbers for Obamacare’s federal exchanges
next week. To the surprise of almost no one, Health and Human
Services Secretary said today that the actual enrollment totals
won’t be very high. Sebelius testified on the botched rollout of
Obamacare’s online insurance portals today. A few details,
via Politico:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today
acknowledged that long-awaited enrollment figures for the rocky
first month of Obamacare will be “very low.”

“We intend to give you as much information as we can validate,”
Sebelius told a Senate Finance Committee hearing where lawmakers
from both parties harshly criticized the rollout and her agency’s
lack of foresight about the massive problems. She said the initial
batch of enrollment figures being released next week cover “the
first month of enrollment” and will include both Medicaid and
health plan numbers in the new insurance exchanges.

So far, the administration, which is directly running
Obamacare’s insurance exchanges in 36 states, has released some web
traffic numbers, the number of applications submitted across all
federal and state exchanges, and the number of subsidy calculations
performed by the IRS. Federal officials have suggested that the
numbers they have released prove there’s strong interest in the
law. But the administration declined to given any official
enrollment totals. 

Both Sebelius and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney
previously refused to discuss enrollment figures on the grounds
that they didn’t have the numbers. Notes from daily meetings in the
administration’s daily Obamacare “war room” meetings
later revealed that senior administration officials had exact
numbers for the first few days—with just six individuals
successfully enrolling on day one, and a total of 248 enrollments
on day two.