The ObamaCare propaganda push over at The Washington Post‘s Wonk Blog just went into overdrive. Moving beyond the White House’s misuse of the word “enrollee,” The Post is now reporting the flat-out false claim that 365,000 “have purchased private insurance” through the ObamaCare exchanges.
Unless The Post has in some way redefined the word “purchase,” by all accounts “purchase” means “to pay for.” Not only has the Obama Administration thus far refused to release the number of ObamaCare sign-ups who have gone as far as to enroll/pay for/purchase their ObamaCare, two sources of independent reporting (one of them CNN) reveal that some insurers have not been paid by 80% to 95% of ObamaCare sign-ups.
The 365,000 number the White House is passing along as the number who have enrolled in ObamaCare is in reality just those who have “selected” a health plan. In layman’s terms, it is the number of those who have put a health plan in their shopping cart.
Until you pay, you have neither enrolled in nor purchased ObamaCare, and online studies have shown that 67% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts and never purchase whatever it is they have selected.
Over at Hot Air, Allahpundit points out that in some states, those who fail to pay by the deadline this month will have their coverage completely voided and then have to sign up all over again next year. As far as why the White House isn’t making a big deal of this, he posits:
I’m frankly surprised that HHS hasn’t started ringing alarm bells about the nonpayment problem in order to try to mitigate it. I can only assume, as with so much else, that that’s a political decision made at the expense of a policy one. The more they start screaming about paying on time, the more the media will start focusing on this as the next landmine to detonate, replete with another look at how pricey some of America’s new “affordable” coverage is.
It looks as though The Washington Post has made the exact same political calculation.
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