If Sebelius Doesn't Know How Many People Have Paid For Their Insurance, She Is Either A Liar Or An Incompetent Administrator.

Did Sebelius Lie To Congress About How Many People Have Enrolled In Obamacare?

March 14, 2014 by Ben Bullard 

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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Congress she expects an increase in 2015 Obamacare premiums.

On Wednesday, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius played ignorant when Congressional Republicans asked her, point blank, how many alleged Obamacare enrollees have actually paid for the insurance plans they browsed through an online marketplace. “I can’t tell you because I don’t know that,” she replied.

Nah, she knows — or she’s intentionally sequestering herself from solid enrollment statistics the insurances companies have indeed provided to the government, one insurance industry source told POLITICOThursday.

“They have a lot more information than they’re letting on,” the unnamed source said of President Barack Obama’ HHS Secretary’s feigned ignorance. “They have real hard data about the percent [of shoppers] that have paid … If they have not processed those yet and compiled the data, that is a choice they are making. But they have that data now.”

The Obama Administration is touting an Obamacare enrollment figure of 4.2 million, a number that it grudgingly admits reflects shoppers who made it all the way to an online shopping cart — but not those who actually bought anything.

But insurance officials “at four of the big national plans tell POLITICO that about 15 to 20 percent of people who have signed up have not yet paid their first monthly premium — the final step to get coverage,” according to Thursday’s report. “And they’ve told the White House the same.”

It’s obvious that Obama Administration officials tasked with enacting whichever parts of the law the President feels like enacting are being forced, by election-season political expediency, to conceal the fact they’re having to hold their noses even as they carry out the President’s dirty work of rolling out the government-managed insurance scheme.

Despite her ostensible cluelessness about how many people have truly enrolled, Sebelius nonetheless was armed with sufficient data Wednesday to predict an increase in Obamacare premiums for 2015.

That, of course, comes as belated news to anyone who heard candidate Obama’s repeated, repeated, repeated pledge to drop premiums “by up to $2,500 per family, per year” in the run-up to the 2008 Presidential election.