Here's the opening:
The Obama administration's internal projections called for strong enrollment in the states in the first year of new health insurance markets, according to unpublished estimates obtained by The Associated Press. Whether those expectations will bear out is unclear...Also:
"Why there is this reluctance to share internal estimates, I don't know," said health economist Gail Wilensky, who ran Medicare for President George H.W. Bush. "This kind of information has a way of worming its way out into the open, which makes it look like they have something to hide."Reality has a funny way of confounding the best-laid plans of politicians.
While consumer interest in the new health insurance markets has been undeniably strong, it's hard to get a sense of how many people have been able to navigate balky federal and state websites and successfully enroll. Numbers released by states running their own marketplaces suggest upward of 100,000 people have enrolled so far, out of millions of potential interested customers.
The administration refuses to release numbers for the 36 states in which it is taking the lead. Officials at first said the frozen computer screens and other issues were the result of a high volume of interest. They later acknowledged software and design issues were also to blame.
HHS belatedly rolled out a feature that allows consumers to get a look at health plans in their area without first establishing an account. The requirement that people set up an account before shopping was at odds with the normal way e-commerce websites are run, and was blamed for overloading the system.
Appearing earlier this week on MSNBC, former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the situation is "excruciatingly embarrassing" for the administration.
