New ObamaCare enrollment projections way below solvency requirement

If it seems like we've been here before, well, we have. With the initial launch of ObamaCare, the administration indicated that they needed a minimum of 7 million signups to keep the program solvent. But that was just for the first year. In order to keep it solvent going forward, those numbers need to steadily increase. With the new enrollment period about to begin, the projection is that ObamaCare needs 13 million to remain fiscally viable.

How is that looking? Not good:

The administration on Monday said fewer than 10 million Americans will enroll in Obamacare’s health exchanges this go-around, well short of the 13 million target congressional scorekeepers deemed critical to its economics, suggesting another rocky rollout in the law’s second year of full operation. • Policy advisers at the Health & Human Services Department estimated that 9 million to 9.9 million people would enroll through the exchanges — or only a slight increase over the 8 million that the administration says were active at the end of the first enrollment period this April. The Congressional Budget Office, which is the government’s official scorekeeper, had predicted the law would need 13 million customers on the exchanges. . . . • In the first enrollment, which lasted from Oct. 1, 2013, through April of this year, the administration initially appeared poised to fall well short of the CBO’s 7 million customer estimate. But after several deadline delays and feverish work to fix botched federal and state websites, the government said it enrolled 8 million and, of those, 7.1 million have paid their premiums and retained coverage. HHS projects 5.9 million, or 83 percent, of initial customers will re-enroll.

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Don't overlook the significance of that last number. ObamaCare was sold on the idea that more than 40 million Americans were just dying to get health insurance but couldn't afford it for various reasons, so the government was going to step in and make it affordable and easily accessible. Yet they just barely cleared 7 million who enrolled and paid their premiums, and now 17 percent of those are not even expected to re-enroll. What does that say about the real demand for health insurance? Three-quarters of those supposedly desperate for insurance never even bothered to sign up, and of those who did, 17 percent aren't even going to keep it into the second year. You realize, of course, that when enrollment falls short of projections and the insurers are taking a bath, there are only three possible ways to address the problem. One is a premium hike (which will only further drive down the number of those enrolled). One is a narrowing of covered services (which will even further drive down the number of those enrolled, because why pay when the value is diminished?), and one is a massive government bailout of the insurers. But don't worry! ObamaCare is working! That's what the Democrats and the media keep telling us. If Tuesday's election results are any indication, though, the voters aren't buying it. Nor should they.