Sources claiming as few as 5-15% of ObamaCare 'enrollees' have paid their premiums

The administration and its liberal allies love to cite their new, severely massaged, set of November numbers. If they're to be believed, as of November 30th 365,000 people have signed up for private insurance through ObamaCare.

Most of these came from state-run exchanges, with the majority hailing from California and New York. For a moment, let's set aside the fact that this number is probably inflated. We'll also ignore the fact that it counts "people who have selected a plan" as enrollees, and we'll overlook the fact that 41 states have enrollment numbers that are, at their best, in the four-figure range. We'll just go with the 365,000. 365,000 enrollees means that, since its launch, ObamaCare has managed to "enroll" just over a million people - if you count 800,000 Medicaid signups. However, as we all know, enrollees in private plans are not insured until they actually make a payment. Last week, CNN reported that at least one insurer in Indiana was seeing a payment rate of only about 20%. Since we all know CNN likes to paint as rosy a picture of the ACA as possible, that horrible number actually seemed a bit...optomistic.

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Now, health care watchdogs are reporting what we suspected. Charles Ornstein has multiple sources suggesting that, come January, things are going to hit the ObamaCare fan.

“There is also a lot of worrying going on over people making payments,” industry consultant Robert Laszewski wrote in an email. “One client reports only 15% have paid so far. It is still too early to know for sure what this means but we should expect some enrollment slippage come the payment due date.” Another consultant Kip Piper, agreed. “So far I’m hearing from health plans that around 5% and 10% of consumers who have made it through the data transfer gauntlet have paid first month’s premium and therefore truly enrolled,” he wrote me. “It naturally varies by insurer and will hopefully increase as we get close to end of December and documents flow in the mail,” added Piper, a former official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “But overall I’m hearing it’s a small portion so far. And that, of course, is a fraction of an already comparatively small number of people who have made it through setting up an account, getting verified, subsidy eligibility determined, plan selected, complete and correct data transferred to the insurer, and insurer set out the confirmation with invoice for consumer’s share of the first month’s premium.”

According to another of Ornstein's contacts, companies will consider themselves lucky if half the so-called enrollees pay on time. Remember, despite the administration's claims, until you've paid, you haven't really "enrolled" in anything. Since they're being cagey about the payment data, that 365,000 figure might as well be a complete fabrication. There's simply no way to confirm how many of those people are truly insured, making it essentially meaningless. So a tiny percentage of people have managed to "select a plan" and, of those, a tiny percentage has paid. As we said, the administration is claiming that ObamaCare has managed to "enroll" just over a million people. If Ornstein's sources are right, the number of people who have actually purchased private plans could be down around 40-70 thousand. This stands in stark contrast to the roughly 5 million who've lost their preferred policies thanks to the law. In many states, failure to make your first premium payment on time voids your application, meaning that people who don't write that check will have to begin the signup process all over again. Add to that the fact that Healthcare.gov is informing an untold number of people that they're eligible for Medicaid when they aren't, and you've got a recipe for a disaster that absolutely dwarfs the already horrendous rollout.