White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was forced to play defense on Obamacare Friday as he tried to defend the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on faulty state insurance exchanges. Searching for an answer, Carney turned to California’s "Covered California" as an example of a successful operation.
"California hit its target in the middle of February in terms of enrollees. So that’s one working pretty well, I guess," Carney said.
Apparently Carney’s bar for "working pretty well" is incredibly low. Maybe Carney forgot California’s online exchange was shut down for five days last week due to software problems, or the lingering problems consumers encounter when trying to sign up for Covered California.
California has also faced problems enrolling enough Latinos. Latinos comprise 50% of the uninsured population in California, but only accounted for 21% of signups through mid-February.
California may have met its "target" for enrollment, but it is unclear what percentage of the signups only joined the exchange because they had been kicked off of their previous plan.
If California is an exchange that is "working pretty well", the Free Beacon is afraid to see Carney’s definition of working poorly.