German Lopez highlights it:
About 80 to 90 percent of Obamacare enrollees are paying their insurance premiums, major health insurers testified before Congress on Wednesday. The insurers’ testimony undercut a report from House Republicans that found only 67 percent of enrollees on Obamacare’s federal exchanges had paid their premiums. Insurers only start coverage after they have received a first month’s premium payment from an enrollee, making the percent paid an important metric to gauge how many people will actually gain coverage.
House Republicans’ report, insurers explained, got that metric wrong.
Allahpundit wonders why the House Republicans rushed to issue that 67 percent number:
Theory one: Stupidity. If and when the final payment numbers are released and it’s confirmed that 10-20 percent of new enrollees, a.k.a. 800,000 to 1.6 million people, will be tossed from the rolls, the White House now has some handy spin. “Once again Republicans underestimated ObamaCare,” they’ll say. “They thought we’d top out at 67 percent payment and we made it to 80 percent. Another victory!” Always a bad idea to lower expectations for your opponent. Theory two: Cynicism. Maybe the committee suspects (correctly) that most people don’t follow the news consistently but get it in bits and pieces at irregular times, especially when it comes to a subject as complex and long-running as ObamaCare. As such, they may have decided to float the 67 percent figure knowing/assuming it was bogus but confident that some low-information voters would notice it and conclude that O-Care was underperforming in yet another metric. Some of those voters will miss today’s news and the White House crowing to come about the correct figure and remain convinced that fully a third of new enrollees haven’t paid.
Suderman puts a negative spin on the new numbers:
The House GOP report was too early, ignored deadline issues, and turned out to be problematic as a result. But based on insurer testimony, the administration’s much-touted total of 8 million sign-ups is likely to be reduced by a million or more when converted into paid enrollments. In other words, the administration’s figures were too rosy by quite a bit—just not as much as House Republicans suggested.
Cohn frames the story very differently:
“What you have here is very solid first year enrollment, no matter how you slice it,” Dan Mendelson, president of Avalere Health, told Bloomberg’s Alex Wayne.
If an account of Wednesday’s hearings by The Hill‘s Elise Viebeck is accurate—I didn’t see them—the testimony from insurers didn’t sit too well with members of the House majority. “Republicans were visibly exasperated,” Viebeck reported, “as insurers failed to confirm certain assumptions about Obamacare.” Republicans have had plenty of chances to embarrass Democrats over Obamcare and, given the law’s very real shortcomings, they’ll be sure to have plenty more. But on Wednesday, it seems, Republicans mostly succeeded in embarrassing themselves.
The Dish 