Obamacare Hits Enrollment Target With Days To Spare
On Thursday, President Obama announced on a call with volunteers that the number of Americans who have enrolled in health insurance plans under Obamacare has hit six million.
With days to spare before open enrollment ends on March 31, this Monday night at midnight EST, the administration has met its target. Just eleven days ago, the Obama administration announced that enrollments had hit five million— meaning that the pace of enrollment has significantly picked up recently, and a million Americans enrolled in less than two weeks.
The success of open enrollment undermines critics who seized on the law’s troubled early rollout to predict that law could never attract enough Americans to succeed. Below are some of the worst predictions after the administration published the first enrollment figures in November of 2013:
1. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)
“Above all, this report is a symbol of the failure of the President’s health care law… It is a rolling calamity that must be scrapped. [CNN]
2. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA)
“Pretty stunning…Just another day in a series of mess-ups in Obamacare.”
3. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
4. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
“But this Administration will trudge ahead. Keep the doors open. Thousands of people enrolled instead of millions. They just released a number this week for the 36 states using the malfunctioning federal Exchange. Fewer than 27,000 people. Including people who haven’t actually committed to purchase the plans … those who have put it in their shopping cart….So the Administration will limp along with this pitiful sign up process hoping to get people properly assigned to health plans.
5. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-OH)
He called the numbers “staggeringly low.”
6. Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC)
7. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)
“The 27,000 enrollments through federally facilitated exchange pale in comparison to the millions of Americans who have lost their health insurance under ObamaCare… It is time for the president to finally acknowledge ObamaCare isn’t working and to delay the law, in fairness to families and individuals.”
8. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS)
“The numbers released today are indicative of failure. Not just the failure of a website, but a failure of the underlying law, a failure to keep promises to the American people, and, above all, a failure of leadership.”
9. Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS)
“Today, we learned only 371 Kansans have been able to successfully sign up [in October] for a health care plan on the federally run Obamacare exchange. And only a mere 106,185 total Americans have been able to sign up on both the federal and state exchanges across the country. These numbers are abysmal; the administration has not met even 25 percent of its enrollment goal for the first month.”
10. Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA)
11. Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR)
12. Rep. David Camp (R-MI)
“Even if this data was an accurate picture, the administration would need to enroll 68,000 people per day to meet their year-end goal…However, the website isn’t even designed to handle that much traffic and is currently capable of only handling less than half that much… With the little data we have so far, I fear we could see a fundamental breakdown of the insurance market with coverage gaps and skyrocketing premiums – pricing millions of Americans out of health care, yet still forced to pay the individual mandate tax.”
Still In Line? You Have More Time: Although open enrollment technically ends on Monday, there will be time to help you complete the process. On Wednesday, the administration announced that the people who have experienced technological difficulties will be allowed to complete their enrollment in April.
Haven’t Sign Up Yet? Go to healthcare.gov today to find a plan that works for you and your budget. Then – tell a friend to do the same.