Coyote Blog

I did not want this to get lost -- in an Enrollment report that used the word "enroll" or some variant 229 times, the one thing the report was missing was the actual number of people who had enrolled.  On the Medicaid side, the report said how many had been found eligible but not how many had enrolled.  On the private side, the best we get is this, which is just a classic of the political art:

106,185 (10 percent) of the 1,081,592 total Marketplace plan eligible persons have already selected a plan by clicking a button on the website page.

The obvious language would have been "106,185 enrolled in a plan" or "bought a plan."  But it does not say this, despite the fact that the Obama Administration certainly has the relevant number.  What this means is that 106,185 people ... OK, a quick aside.  It is not actually 106,185 people being successful on the web.  This is the number of people who would be covered in plans "clicked on" by visitors.  The total number of clicks is well under this -- likely something like 60,000, if the ration of 1.78 persons per application holds from the other numbers in the report.  So this is the number of people covered in something like 60,000 plans that visitors did the equivalent of putting in the online shopping cart but may not yet have paid for.

Well, maybe the number paid is really close to 106,185.  Hah!  I can disprove that quite simply:  We were not told the number.  QED it sucks.