My must read of the day is "Only 106,000 Pick Health Insurance Plans in First Month," in the New York Times:
Just over 106,000 people picked health plans in the first month of open enrollment through the state and federal insurance marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s health secretary said Wednesday, a fraction of the administration’s initial estimate for enrollment during that period. […]
When Massachusetts expanded health coverage in 2007, only 123 of the 36,167 people who ultimately signed up did so during the first month of enrollment. But more than 7,000 signed up in the final month. (Massachusetts counted only people who had already paid their premiums as enrollees, according to Jon Kingsdale, who ran that state’s health insurance exchange for the first four years.)
There is still one month to go until the Dec. 15 deadline for signing up for coverage that begins Jan. 1; the initial enrollment period does not close until March 31. So administration officials, and some outside experts, say these early figures do not reveal much.
For the past couple of weeks, administration officials have repeatedly said something along the lines of "we expect the numbers to be low … they were low in Massachusetts the first month too." Not surprisingly, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said exactly that in a Wednesday press release.
This is the most peculiar defense of low numbers.
If administration officials always expected the numbers to be low, why would they give themselves an unachievable goal of nearly 500,000 enrollees for the first month?
Either the officials are morons for setting the 500,000 October enrollment baseline, or they always knew enrollment would be subpar but hyped the program nonetheless.
Now that everyone has had half a day to discuss the numbers and send some ill-advised tweets, a really big question remains unanswered: How many of those 106,185 who have selected programs (on the state and federal exchanges) are the "young invincibles" necessary to make the program work?
Without knowing the demographic makeup of enrollees, these numbers are inconclusive at best.