ObamaCare: Quinn touts 100K enrollees; all in Medicaid

Gov. Pat Quinn has been touting 100,000 new Cook County enrollees as evidence of ObamaCare’s success. The reality is that this claim reflects both desperate and creative government accounting. The governor was referring to 100,000 people who enrolled in the state’s Medicaid expansion program earlier this year under an early pilot project in Cook County....

Gov. Pat Quinn has been touting 100,000 new Cook County enrollees as evidence of ObamaCare’s success. The reality is that this claim reflects both desperate and creative government accounting.

The governor was referring to 100,000 people who enrolled in the state’s Medicaid expansion program earlier this year under an early pilot project in Cook County. Why would the governor try to use these enrollees – instead of the “throngs of Illinoisans who are supposedly obtaining health insurance coverage under the ObamaCare health insurance exchange – as evidence of ObamaCare’s success?

Yesterday’s scathing Chicago Tribune editorial, “Why Obamacare is a Mess,” might provide some insights. After detailing a long list of the law’s ill-effects and bungled implementation, the article calls for a delay in the individual mandate:

“The administration can do one thing — apparently on its own — to spare many Americans. It can delay the requirement that everyone buy insurance by March 31 or pay a penalty. Federal officials already have granted a one-year reprieve to the mandate that most employers provide insurance to their workers or pay a penalty. The administration cut a sweet deal for Congress and its staffers, who will continue to get generous federal subsidies. It has allowed any number of carve-outs for special pleaders.

“A delay in the individual mandate would not be a special favor to American consumers. It’s a matter of fairness.”

Indeed, the governor’s praise of ObamaCare’s success belies the facts that are clear to everyone else: ObamaCare is a train wreck. No amount of desperate and creative promotion or continued efforts to conceal enrollment numbers and plan details under the exchange are going to change that fact.