Free Republic

With all the controversy over the 2020 census this year, you might think the bureaucrats would have been extra-special careful in preparing for it. This doesn't appear to be the case. The Government Accountability Office has issued a scathing report on the readiness of the Census Bureau to begin conducting the count. They have dropped the ball in recruiting the thousands of workers who will go door to door; they have lagged in forming partnerships with local civic groups who assist in finding those hard to count; and they have missed deadlines in testing new IT technology that would allow...

David Hogg, the self-professed anti-gun genius, has been caught red-handed promoting an election fraud scheme. Recently, Hogg announced that he would be taking a “gap year” putting off college “to work on the midterm elections and help educate new voters.” Well, it seems that educating new voters includes showing them how to engage in election fraud. Now, Hogg’s in a public meltdown as he sees his fame and glory get flushed down the drain. Thanks to a savvy Twitter user who screen captured Hogg retweeting instructions by the George Soros funded-group called HeadCount. It pretty much sounds an awful lot...

**SNIP** Ninety–four percent is an impressive number, particularly considering Obamacare is mandatory, and most readers would assume everyone kept their insurance. Which makes 94 percent a real success story. Except they didn’t keep their insurance, and it’s not a success story. The truth is (there’s that word again), over one–third of Covered California policyholders dropped their insurance altogether. Attkisson contends this is one of the worst retention rates in the nation. And for those poor souls who are still at the mercy of Covered California, the situation doesn’t get any better, 84 percent of the policyholders will be paying increased...

The Republicans are facing a 16 million person problem. With the Obama administration announcing this month that some 16 million people have obtained health insurance since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the Republicans' intense focus on completely repealing the law is increasingly looking unrealistic.

An NBC affiliate in Virginia reports that nearly 250,000 people in that state will lose their health care plans due to Obamacare:

Florida’s Obamacare enrollment is now over 220,000 lower than the Obama administration’s most recent tally, according to a report from the state insurance department. The Obama administration hasn’t released updated Obamacare enrollment statistics since May, when the Department of Health and Human Services put the number of Florida sign-ups at 983,775 — but the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation says that now, just 762,723 Floridians have health insurance through the exchange.The state insurance department issued a report this week including updated exchange enrollment, based on rate filings from state health insurers. By June 2014, the number of Obamacare enrollees in...

Aetna's (NYSE:AET) ObamaCare exchange statistics should clear up any doubt as to why the Obama Administration has been tight-lipped about enrollment since celebrating 8 million sign-ups in mid-April. Reality, evidence suggests, could require quite a come-down from those lofty claims. The nation's third-largest health insurer had 720,000 people sign up for exchange coverage as of May 20, a spokesman confirmed to IBD. At the end of June, it had fewer than 600,000 paying customers. Aetna expects that to fall to "just over 500,000" by the end of the year. That would leave Aetna's paid enrollment down as much as 30%...

Although the deadline to sign up for an Obamacare insurance plan has officially past, the number of South Carolinians who are enrolled keeps climbing. The S.C. Department of Insurance reported Friday that 114,789 individuals selected a plan on the federal exchange through April 15 - up from an estimate of 97,000 earlier this month. The deadline to sign up for insurance was technically March 31, but the federal government granted an extension through mid-April to applicants who encountered any difficulty enrolling. The newly enrolled must pay their first premium by May 1 to become insured. To date, only 67,846 of...

Obamacare has reportedly enrolled 7.1 million individuals since its exchanges opened in October. However, according to a recently released RAND report, just 1.4 million of those individuals were previously uninsured.Avik Roy of Forbes reports: Last week, I wrote about an article in the Los Angeles Times, on a then-as-yet unpublished report from the RAND Corporation. The report indicated that only one-third of Obamacare’s purported 7.1 million exchange sign-ups were from the previously uninsured. But Noam Levey, the author of the Times article, didn’t disclose RAND’s actual findings as to the actual number of previously uninsured exchange enrollees. Well, now we know why. RAND published the full...

Connecticut officials say the state's health insurance marketplace is on track to sign up about 200,000 people in health plans by the enrollment deadline, double the original goal of 100,000 individuals. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy visited Access Health CT office in Hartford on Monday. He urged people without coverage to spend the final hours before the midnight deadline enrolling online, calling the hotline or getting in line at one of the two storefronts operated by the marketplace, Access Health CT, in New Britain and New Haven. Malloy said if people submit basic personal information by midnight, their applications can be...

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Sunday that the Obama administration was “cooking the books” on enrollment figures for ObamaCare. ADVERTISEMENT Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Barrasso said he wasn’t persuaded by statistics that said that more than six million people had signed up for insurance under the healthcare law.

More than 6 million people have now signed up for private insurance plans under President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law known as Obamacare, reflecting a surge in enrollments days before the March 31 deadline, the White House said on Thursday. The milestone gives the White House some ammunition to use against Republican critics, who have described the program as a flop in the build-up to midterm congressional campaigns in November, when Democratic control of the U.S. Senate is at stake. Only 10 days ago, the administration had pegged enrollment at more than 5 million people, and enlisted celebrities and top...

VideoThe Obama administration is engaged in a “final coordinated push” to enroll blacks in ObamaCare, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said Friday. Jarrett said blacks have a “disproportionately low rate of coverage,” and called enrolling them the administration’s “top priority.” “We still have a long way to go and we want to make sure we take advantage of every opportunity for outreach,” she said in a Friday conference call with reporters and three mayors that preside over large black communities: Kevin Johnson of Sacramento, Calif., Michael Nutter of Philadelphia and A.C. Wharton of Memphis, Tenn. An estimated 6.8 million...

<p>White House health care adviser Phil Schiliro said Tuesday that a goal of seven million people signing up for health insurance by the end of March was “never our target number,” attempting to downplay a figure that has been circulated for months.</p>

The Obama Administration announced today that 1.1 million Americans have signed up for Obamacare so far. That number includes the number who have signed up for the taxpayer-funded Medicaid part of the plan. As of December 11, 2013– Over 800,000 Americans signed up for the taxpayer-funded Medicaid program. Over five million Americans have lost their health care plans so far. The Hill reported: More than 1.1 million people enrolled in ObamaCare before a December 24 deadline for consumers seeking healthcare plans that begin Jan. 1, the Obama administration said early Sunday. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Marilyn...

More than 1.1 million people enrolled in ObamaCare before a December 24 deadline for consumers seeking healthcare plans that begin Jan. 1, the Obama administration said early Sunday. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Marilyn Tavenner said in a blog post that more than 975,000 people enrolled in a qualified health plan through the federal marketplace in December, following a rocky rollout in October. Detailed demographics were not released. Tavenner called the late surge “welcome.” “Our HealthCare.gov enrollment nearly doubled in the days before the January 1 coverage deadline compared to the first few weeks of the month,”...

WHAT percent of American men are gay? This question is notoriously difficult to answer. Historical estimates range from about 2 percent to 10 percent. But somewhere in the exabytes of data that human beings create every day are answers to even the most challenging questions. Using surveys, social networks, pornographic searches and dating sites, I recently studied evidence on the number of gay men. The data used in this analysis is available in highly aggregated form only and can be downloaded from publicly accessible sites. While none of these data sources are ideal, they combine to tell a consistent story....

WellPoint CEO Says Obamacare Sign-Ups Still ‘Anemic’ http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/11/19/wellpoint-ceo-says-obamacare-sign-ups-still-anemic/?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories “I’ll be very candid, we have pulled back from marketing, not knowing how to get people enrolled at the moment,” Joseph Swedish, WellPoint’s chief executive, said in an interview at the WSJ CEO Council Tuesday. Why in the world would they not be promoting their services ? Do THEY NEED the government ? Are they (the insurance companies) pushing people into buying through the exchange ? Even though I can achieve the mandate if I secure a plan without them ? Questions for him and other insurance providers: Can people enroll, with...

It is quite amazing as to what state and federal officials tout as Obamacare "success" stories. For example, in the state of Washington, of the 57,730 who have signed up, a whopping 51,368 were for "free" Medicaid services. Given that Medicaid is jointly funded by the state and federal government, this is bound to put a hole in the state budget. Nonetheless, state officials are pleased with the result as noted by the Peninsula Daily News. Nearly 1,400 early birds on the North Olympic Peninsula signed up for health insurance on Washington's health care exchange in October, according to data...

The Obama administration revealed Wednesday that fewer than 27,000 people signed up for private health insurance in the 36 states relying on HealthCare.gov. Meantime lawmakers grilled the White House's IT chief about the troubled site