White House press secretary Jay Carney acknowledged Tuesday that at least a fifth of the five million Obamacare enrollees haven’t actually paid for health insurance.
Carney was asked how many of the enrollments the administration has been touting have paid. “We don’t have specific data that’s, you know, in a reliable enough form to provide,” he concluded.
“We can point you to major insurers who have placed that figure at 80 percent, give-or-take, depending on the insurer,” Carney said.
That means at least 20 percent of enrollments, or one million, don’t have coverage. Official figures probably won’t be released until well after the open enrollment period has passed.
Goldman Sachs analysts estimated last week that while the administration will count 5.5 million to six million people will select plans on Obamacare marketplace, they expect four million to purchase health insurance in the end. They expect just 25 percent of those customers to be previously uninsured.
And consulting firm McKinsey and Company’s latest survey found that 77 percent of people who select plans will purchase them before the deadline, with 27 percent of customers having been formerly uninsured. These estimates put total Obamacare insurance coverage at somewhere between 3.85 and four million at the end of March. (RELATED: How many have paid Obamacare premiums?)
Obamacare advertisements are fairly effective at getting people to go to the website and even select a plan. But when it comes to paying a monthly premium, people are must less likely to follow through.
Having missed long ago its original measure of success — seven million enrollments in Obamacare — the health-care law will still be unable to its ratcheted-down goal of six million when it comes to providing people with real health coverage.
Carney refused to answer the original question from Fox News correspondent Ed Henry — why is the administration still calling these people “enrolled?”
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