Ed Morrissey:
Count Ted Cruz among the unimpressed about the HHS claim that over seven million Americans enrolled in ObamaCare by the end of the open-enrollment deadline. Javier Manjarres conducted a short telephone interview with Sen. Cruz, pointing out an earlier story broken by talk radio host Drew Steele about notification letters from HHS of ObamaCare auto-enrollment and questioned whether those were part of the HHS calculations. Cruz called this part of the mystery around the “funny numbers” coming out of the Obama administration, and wondered how many of the 7.1 million were only partial sign-ups:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/aqTLxlshqPU[/youtube]
The letter illustrates two things. Number one, that the Obama administration is using funny numbers when it is touting the enrollment numbers, it has failed to distinguish between those who just signed up to get an application, and those who actually purchased insurance and paid their first month’s premium.
It has also deliberately neglected who was insured, so they are just trying to inflate their numbers to make it appear far better than it is, and this is a real manifestation of this-we don’t know how many of these letters HHS sent out, and we don’t even know if they are counting the partially completed applications that they filled out in the funny numbers that they are releasing.
In addition to that, it also underscores the incredible lack of data security and the violations of privacy that Obamacare necessitates, because on the face of the letter, it is state government agencies that are forwarding your personal health information to the federal government without your permission, against your wishes, and they have no business doing that. Its one of many problems that is pandemic in Obamacare.
Javier has pictures of one HHS letter, sent out to an unknown number of Americans which informed them that HHS had “started” an application for them based on information from other government agencies. This is part of the text of the letter:
“…You or someone on your application will likely be able to get coverage through the Marketplace, and get help paying for health coverage…We used the information from the state agency to start an application for you on Healthcare.gov. You’ll need to complete and submit this application to see if you qualify for Marketplace coverage.
To do this, you can log into your Healthcare.gov account, or if you don’t already have an account, you can create one on Healthcare.gov… For more information about how to complete the application we started for you www.healthcare.gov/help/statetranser”
Did these partial sign-ups get counted in the final 7.1 million figure? No one knows, because HHS hasn’t exactly been forthcoming on the data from these claims made over the past couple of weeks.
Needless to say, Republicans would like to get more of that information — and the nomination of Sylvia Burwell to replace Kathleen Sebelius as HHS Secretary gives Senate Republicans the perfect opening to demand that data, as well as explanations for the many other failures at HHS.
We had a friend in another state (not Utah) who started and stopped (or got disconnected) multiple times from her state exchange before finally going to an insurer’s web site and signing up without any subsidy.
Each one of her many, many, multiple attempts to sign up warranted her a letter like this one on March 27th.
She was saying they wanted her, her children (each) her family in various levels of completeness and her mis-spelled versions all to simply go to this web site and ”finish” being signed up.
I wonder how many of her attempts were counted as part of that 7.1 million enrollees?
Ted Cruz: “We should abolish the IRS.”
People like this guy are setting the GOP up for a landslide defeat in 2016.
@Greg:
There’s nothing extremist about wanting to abolish the IRS, which never should have been conceived of in the first place. It’s a decades old Libertarian platform. The United States didn’t have an income tax until 1913. As recent events illustrate, the primary purpose of the IRS is to be the intimidation arm of the Collective. The revenue it steals from the productive class merely facilitates abusive spending, much like giving an unsupervised teenager access to their parent’s credit card at the shopping mall.
Ted Cruz is a proponent of Christian dominionism. I would oppose him for that, if nothing else.
Yea, that’s a tough one Greg. Besides, I seriously doubt your claim about that dominionism…so evil and all…
I much rather have someone who is a socialist/communist and rules over me with their make believe reality, and their make believe utopia, their make believe God (Government) ….Steals from me and Lies to me all the time…
I mean –
How can we expect anybody to respect anyone else if they do not know why it is they should do so?
I know someone close to me who has had the unfortunate task, and I cringe for them, or for even mentioning it’s name….they
have been forced intohad to sign up for the ACA aka Obamacare….Ugh!Long story short…after multiple attempts, and hitting multiple ‘glitches’ and even speaking to a navigator they STILL do not have Health Insurance, nor have completely ‘signed’ up, nor made a payment toward this despicable Law we, as Americans, were ‘Forced’ into.
This person was specifically told by the navigator the following:
– We cannot contact a technician to relay the problem you are having to them.
– Don’t attempt to do anything further because you may create more glitches…Ha!
– Give us your phone number we will call you when we clear this up…
That was a month ago…
This person STILL does NOT have HEALTH INSURANCE…
So, yes, I believe wholeheartedly the Government is once again…. LYING!!
@Greg:
What about 2014? That election comes first. Landslide?
@Greg:
That certainly seems to be the Collective’s assigned talking point directive. But what’s the actual evidence for this?
I challenge Greg to find anything in writing proving this charge.
Here’s what I found:
In other words, Cruz took the WINNING side when talking about a court case and openly was for that win.
The Supreme Court is the one that decided it.
Get mad at them!
But their decision is hardly an establishment of a theocracy!
This is NOT a push for ”theocracy!””
Students of ALL religions from Jew to Muslims to Buddhist to Christian can and do ”observe a moment of silence,” while in school. This is especially true right before a test.
“Under God” has been in the Pledge since the 50’s, the real push is on to remove it by a few easily offended atheists in a concerted effort.
What have you got to back up your claim, Greg?
@FAITH7:
You forgot to use the /sarc. flag. Without that, Greg is dense enough to think you agree with him.
The false claim of Republicans wanting to create a theocracy is yet another old, tired and continually debunked scare tactic leftover from the 1960’s. Broken record scare tactics is all they have to run on in 2014, as they can’t run on their record.
As for abolishing the IRS: This could actually be a winning platform, as no other government agency is more hated and the Obama administration (along with certain Democrats,) using it to go after conservative non-profits even has moderate Democrat’s very disturbed. Most Americans would welcom a more sensible, easier to understand and fair (doing away with loopholes,) taxation system.