Who wants to tell them applicants is different than enrollees?

Update (ZIP): Obama couldn’t be more misleading if he tried. This is only the first step of many that need to be completed before you are officially enrolled in Obamacare. The vast majority of people had the site crash on them before they could get to the second or third step (out of four). Even worse, roughly half of the “nearly half a million” are from the state exchanges. They are still refusing to release the actual number of people who are officially enrolled.

(Politico) – About a half million people have taken the first step toward enrolling in Obamacare health coverage, creating applications on the exchanges, administration officials said late Saturday in the most complete picture of enrollment yet.

Officials have said they wouldn’t release the number of people who have actually enrolled in a health plan until November – but the number is far smaller than anticipated because of the extensive problems with the online marketplaces known as exchanges.

Creating an application is the first of several steps. People must also shop and compare health plans, find out if they qualify for a federal subsidy and how much, and then actually select and enroll in a specific health plan. Millions of people have smashed into cyber-brick walls as they try to get through the flawed computer system.

And even when people do manage to sign up, insurers and industry consultants say that the federal government is having trouble transmitting accurate and consistent data about who is signing up for which health plan. That indicates the online system has problems at the back end, not just at the consumer entry point.

The administration hopes to get 7 million people enrolled in coverage through the exchanges by the end of March, but the
longer the computer problems persist, the harder it will be to meet that goal. To get covered by Jan. 1, people have to enroll by Dec. 15. But they can still sign up for coverage next year until the end of March.

The Associated Press, which first reported the creation of 476,000 applications, said the numbers were roughly divided between people who had managed to create accounts on the HealthCare.gov federal site, which is serving 36 states, and the state-run exchanges. Some of those state exchanges, such as Kentucky and Washington state, are operating fairly smoothly. Others are still having problems, but overall the state-based systems are working better than the massive federal one.

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