Even if you consider the three fewer days in February, the number of people who “enrolled” (which is a term I use lightly because they only picked a plan) was down from January. HHS also missed its own projections by 34%.
Via CNS News:
In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday afternoon, Health and Human Services officials said February was a “short month,” and that may explain why more people enrolled in Obamacare in January than signed up in February.
But don’t call the 943,000 February sign-ups a decline from January’s 1.146 million!
The 203,000 fewer people who enrolled in Obamcare in February than in January was a drop of 17.7 percent.
“I would note that February’s obviously a short month,” said Nancy Delew, the acting deputy assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at HHS. “There are 28 days in February. January’s a longer month. We also had the period of time covered in the January report included several days from December. December had a lot of enrollment activity. So we don’t think that we had a decline in the month of February.”
The reporter noted that earlier HHS projections called for 1.27 million people to sign up in February. (The 943,000 who did sign up fell 327,000, or 34.6%, short of HHS’s projection.) What about that?
Oh, but “projections are constantly changing,” Julie Bataille responded. Bataille, the communications director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said HHS is “certainly encouraged by the increasing percentage of people that have enrolled and covered. And we think that we are on the right trajectory as we head into the end of March.”