As you'll recall, after over a month of radio silence since the end of Open Enrollment, a couple of weeks ago the HHS Dept. finally stated, when asked directly about it by CNBC's Dan Mangan(although they didn't bother responding to me about it over the previous few weeks), that yes, they would be releasing post-OE2 enrollment data last week.
Well, last week came and went...and nothing. When called out for this publicly by Mangan on Friday afternoon, HHS responded by claiming that they'll do so this week.
While there's a few somewhat plausible ideas tossed in here and there, and a few even voluntarily participated in the ACA's Medicaid expansion program (ironically the most "socialized medicine-ish" provision of the law), on the whole their "policies" are pretty much big nothingburgers.
The most telling (and amusing/depressing, depending on your POV) entries are the ones for Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham and particularly Carly Fiorina:
UPDATE 3/30/15: I wasn't planning on "tweet-spamming" this one, seriously. However, given that this survey is starting to get traction among mainstream news outlets, I thought it was important to take a serious look at the methodology and what the survey is really saying.
So, some outfit called the Foundation for Government Accountability released a Big Survey which claims that Americans hate Obamacare, that they "don’t expect or want states to bail out Congress or the Obama administration" and that they're "prepared to vote against their state lawmakers the next time they’re up for re-election if they set up a state exchange."
First of all, who the heck is the Foundation for Government Accountability? Well, according to Wikipedia:
Hmmm...the headline looks bad, but when you read further it's clearly a matter of perspective more than anything else:
Maryland's health insurance exchange improperly billed the federal government $28.4 million, a Department of Health and Human Services audit reported Friday.
An inspector general's probe found a lack of oversight and internal controls, not criminal wrongdoing, was the cause of the exchange's problems since the marketplace opened in 2013.
Look, I'm not trying to be an obnoxious pain in the ass, but I've been asking for weeks now whether or not the HHS Dept. will or won't be releasing off-season enrollment data for HealthCare.gov, at least during the #ACATaxTime special enrollment period, with nary a peep in response.
Last year, they didn't provide any off-season enrollment reports, but at least they announced as much. I was upset about it, but at least I knew.
Since things are a bit slow at the moment (and inspired by this post (on Facebook, natch) from dKos Sr. Campaign Director Chris Bowers), I figured this would be a good time to ask for some love for the ACA Signups Facebook Page.
As for Twitter, while my personal account is the best known, If you'd prefer just the ACA posts without my personal garbage posts, don't forget to follow the officialACA Signups Twitter Feed.
In the midst of a pretty quiet week data-wise, the Washingotn HealthPlanFinder had a pleasant surprise: An extremely comprehensive enrollment report which breaks down their 2015 numbers every which way possible and, of particular importance to me, also includes data up through March 9th (as opposed to the Feb. 21st cut-off of most of the other state exchanges).
As an additional bonus, the accompanying press release also brings the QHP enrollment numbers even further up to date...right up through March 25th, I think (the PR doesn't specify the exact date of that number, but it's a few thousand higher than the enrollment report so I'm assuming it includes the 16 extra days).
You know, in the year and a half that I've been running this site, I've had a couple of "hit pieces" written about me online (the two which come to mind are the "Online Majority/Newsbusters" incident and the "Investor's Business Daily" piece) and have received plenty of email/comments from critics. However, I've never received a full-on, completely-disconnected-from-reality, frothing-at-the-mouth, speaking-in-tongues rant before...until now.
With that in mind, I present to you the email I received last night from one "Richard Frates" (I am, however, posting it as a series of images rather than the actual text since the last thing I need is for Google searches about this gibberish to bring up my site):
CLARIFICATION: A few folks have inquired whether this is simply an auto-generated spambot thing not directed at me personally (especially since there's nary a peep about the ACA in the blathering). This may be the case...except it was actually sent as a series of 4 contact form submissions in a row, over a 10 minute period. In other words, if it was a random submission, I'm pretty sure it was still done manually, not via auto-script.
