Only 67% have paid their Obamacare premiums

Remember this?

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Monday cited insurance company estimates that say between 80 and 90 percent of those who have selected a plan under ObamaCare have completed the critical final step of making a first premium payment.

“What we know from insurance companies … tell us that, for their initial customers, it’s somewhere between 80, 85, some say as high as 90 percent, have paid so far,” Sebelius said on KWTV-TV, in an interview first uncovered by BuzzFeed. “Lots of companies have different timetables for when their new customers have to send their first payment.”

As is pretty much everything from this prevaricating regime, it was false:

House Republicans on Wednesday said they have data from insurance companies that shows only 67 percent of people who selected a health plan under ObamaCare have paid their first month’s premium.

That total contradicts expert estimates that about 80 to 90 percent of enrollees have paid their first month’s premium. In March, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said as many as 90 percent had paid, based on insurance company estimates.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subpanel on Oversight and Investigations said it contacted every insurance company involved in the federal marketplace, and based its data on people who had paid by April 15. The committee said it found only 2.45 million had paid for coverage through the federal marketplace at that time.

Many enrollees still have time to make their first month’s payment after the enrollment surge earlier this month, so the committee said it would ask insurance companies to update its numbers again by May 20.

“Tired of receiving incomplete pictures of enrollment in the health care law, we went right to the source and found that the administration’s recent declarations of success may be unfounded,” Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said in a statement.

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