Obamacare advocates kept saying and saying that the number of visitors to Healthcare.gov in its first few days demonstrated the enormous popularity of the program.
Not so much(?)
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee revealed Thursday evening that despite the federal exchange website receiving 4.7 million unique visits in its first day, only six individuals — six, as in a half-dozen, or 0.00013 percent of 4.7 million — actually enrolled on Oct. 1, CBS News reported. That number crept up to 100 and 248 at varying points the following day.
“Look at that. Look at that!” an exasperated Megyn Kelly said on her FOX News program “The Kelly File” Thursday night. “Just dreadful.” The shock of Kelly and others has significant context, Karl Rove observed, given the lofty goal the administration had set for enrollment.
“They need 38,461 people a day — for each and every day, Monday through Sunday, of the open enrollment period — to get to the 7 million number by the end of next March,” Rove said. The White House had aimed to have 7 million people enrolled in the health care exchanges by March 31, 2014. “At this pace, it’s not going to happen.”
The enrollment figures come from notes taken during meetings conducted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“High capacity on the website, direct enrollment not working, VA system not connecting, Experian creating confusion with credit check information,” notes from Oct. 2 read, which listed “on-going” issues with Healthcare.gov.
To date, the administration has said it is unable to provide hard enrollment numbers. Its stated goal is to have them available by mid-November.
