US

Burwell: Trust Us Because We Admitted Our Obamacare Mistake After The Media Reported It

Font Size:

Health and Human Services secretary Sylvia Burwell says the public should still trust the administration’s Obamacare enrollment numbers, even though it made a “mistake” that falsely boosted numbers, twice.

As first reported by Bloomberg’s Alex Wayne, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee discovered that both the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and HHS had released Obamacare enrollment totals over the past several months that included dental plans as health insurance enrollments. (RELATED: Obama Admin Propped Up Obamacare Enrollment Total With Dental Plans) 

The real Obamacare enrollment total for health insurance is 6.7 million, below the administration’s target of 7 million for its first open enrollment period, raising serious questions about whether the administration intended to boost the enrollment figure with dental plans.

CMS said that “a mistake was made in calculating” the numbers.

“The mistake we made is unacceptable,” Sec. Burwell said in a conveniently-timed Facebook chat with MSNBC host Chris Hayes Thursday. “I will be communicating that clearly throughout the department. We will be putting in place measures to ensure that this kind of mistake does not occur again after we understand why it happened.”

“While we understand some will be skeptical, our clarity that this is a mistake and the fact that we have quickly corrected the numbers should give people confidence,” Burwell said.

CMS was able to come up with the new enrollment total within hours of the report surfacing, while the “mistake” had presumably gone unnoticed by anyone at HHS for months, since CMS chief Marilyn Tavenner first released the false enrollment total in September. (RELATED: 700,000 Obamacare Sign-Ups Already Dropped Their Coverage)

Follow Sarah on Twitter