On radio this morning, Glenn cited a MailOnline’s exclusive report that confirmed Obamacare’s dismal signup rate. According to MailOnline, Obamacare’s main signup engine, Healthcare.gov, attracted just 6,200 signups on its error-laden launch day and 51,000 new applications after the first week.
“How many people have filed, in the first week, an application? Remember, it takes 7 million people in this system to keep it afloat,” Glenn said. “51,000. 51,000. This according to the Daily Mail.”
“Yeah, because no American publication would never carry this,” Pat added. “Nobody was apparently interested in the story in the United States.”
The numbers are bleak, no matter how you spin them. But they are actually even worse when you consider what the 51,000 number actually represents.
“You can’t go online and find out how much you can save,” Glenn said. “Instead, you have to go on and fill out everything. You have to give them health history. You have to give them all the information: Social Security Number, everything else. And then once you fill out that application, then it will say, this is what you can get and here’s what it’s going to cost.”
Glenn likened the situation to going to a car dealership for a test drive and being told you can’t know any information about the cost of the car until you provide all of your credit information and fill out an application.
“That’s insane. Nobody would ever do business that way. That’s insane,” Glenn said. “And it is also one of the reasons why they actually have higher numbers than have signed up. Because what they’re saying is: The number of people that have filled out applications. And when you say you ‘filled out applications,’ you just assume that that means… they want it, you know… No, they don’t [to sign up]. They just want to see what price it is, but they have to fill out an application to find out what price it is.”
Think of this: Of the 40 million uninsured Americans, just 51,000 people completed the Obamacare application in the first week of rollout. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office says Obamacare needs at least 7 million customers to stay afloat financially.
“And that’s not the number of enrolled. The number of enrolled federally, that enrolled through the federal program: 5,000 enrolled. The number through the state programs was 25,000,” Pat explained. “So 30,000 people so far up to this point have enrolled… [This is a] total and complete disaster because you know the first week or the first two weeks of a rollout are your most important.”
Stu quickly pointed out, however, that the reason people are forced to fill out an application to access the cost of the new healthcare plans is because, without the government subsidies, the price of healthcare skyrockets under Obamacare. The only way to calculate the applicable subsidies is to know the personal information that is required on the application. So this ridiculous system is just another way for the Administration to shield the real cost of Obamacare from the American people.
“And the reason, they talk about in Forbes, is if you went to the website without giving them information, you would see an unsubsidized price for that policy. So you would see a policy that would show the true cost to the American people of what each policy is,” Stu said “If you go there after you’ve given the information, the price looks much more sensible because they’re including all the free money they’re giving you from the government. So the way they designed the program was specifically designed to hide the true cost of each one of these policies so people like us couldn’t just go to the website and make fun of all the high prices. You have to go through the entire process and that way there’s a layer there to hide the true cost from the American people.”