On the Third Hand: Carolinas

On the one hand: It seems reasonable to think that HHS could have messed up the enrollment statistics. HHS and its giant daughter, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), have messed up other aspects of public exchange program administration over the past two years. Why not tracking of statistics?

On the other hand: The Republicans have rolled their eyes at the announcement and hinted, broadly, that it also seems possible that HHS tried to dress up its enrollment figures to show that it still had 7 million exchange public enrollees on Election Day.

Of course, on the third hand, the whole fuss over the 7 million public exchange QHP enrollment statistic seems a little bizarre. The 7 million figure came from Congressional Budget Office analysts who were trying to think what the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) might actually be like years in the future, at a time when it seemed as if Democrats would control both the House and the Senate, voters were enthusiastic about health reform, and the CBO analysts may have had only a vague understanding how hard it might be to keep broke consumers to keep making monthly premium payments.

But HHS has fed into paranoia by releasing far less information about its planning process, its staff deliberations, and its actual performance than many of the state-based exchanges. HHS has justified its refusal to release rough estimates of indicators such as the number of people enrolled in Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) QHPs by saying it wants to make sure it has complete, accurate data. Now, we find the individual QHP update information HHS hoarded over the summer for the noble sake of completeness and accuracy is inaccurate, anyway.

Brokers simply seem open and honest. HHS and many of its outreach people seem to be trying a little too hard to accentuate the positive. Maybe health insurance is an area in which many consumers would prefer honesty over positivity.