Obamacare numbers coming in huge: Here's a guide to GOP excuse-making

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Against all odds and expectations, enrollments in health plans qualified under the Affordable Care Act are surging Monday toward -- and maybe beyond -- the 7-million figure projected by the Congressional Budget Office before Oct. 1, when the open-enrollment period began. The deadline for starting enrollment applications for 2014 plans is midnight Monday.

The surge is creating a big problem for the "train wreck" narrative of Republican opponents of the ACA, who have been holding out hope for Obamacare's utter failure. So the excuse-making has begun.

Before we examine those excuses: You will recall that the budget office reduced its projection of enrollments on individual insurance exchanges to 6 million earlier this year to account for the botched launch of healthcare.gov, the federal enrollment website. Enrollments blew past that mark days ago. If exchange enrollments meet or exceed the original projection of 7 million despite the loss of some six weeks in website functionality in October and November, that would be a testament to the public's latent desire for effective healthcare coverage.


We won't know the final March 31 tally for days, possibly weeks, but that indispensable enrollment tracker Charles Gaba is projecting 6.78 million exchange enrollments, with a chance of topping 7 million.

That figure covers enrollments in private healthcare plans via healthcare.gov and the individual websites offered by 14 states and the District of Columbia. As my colleague Noam Levey is reporting, the Rand Corp. estimates that another 4.5 million previously uninsured adults have signed up for Medicaid in states that expanded that program under the ACA. And about 3 million young adults have obtained coverage through an ACA provision allowing them to stay on their parents' employer plans until age 26.

For Obamacare critics, consequently, the enrollment numbers demand debunking. Here's a bestiary of their arguments for why the figures shouldn't be believed, and explanations of why they're off-base.

"How many have paid?" (Also known as "The statistics are full of deadbeats&quot : We examined this argument a few days ago. We observed that the concern is probably exaggerated and certainly premature, since many people who enrolled late in the cycle, including those in the March surge, may not have payments due for as much as six weeks after enrollment. Many haven't even received their first monthly premium bill yet.

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-obamacare-numbers-20140331,0,4488747.story#ixzz2xa9118Ld

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