The hits just keep on coming with Obamacare enrollee tales of disaster, with the latest joke that more people have actually completed an online application to journey to Mars than successfully signed into the White House’s websites for health reform exchanges.
The Daily Mail reported that Twitter exploded on Thursday after it was revealed that 202,586 individuals had successfully signed up for the Mars One colony project to populate the red planet as soon as the technology becomes available. By comparison, the analytics firm Compete.com found that only 36,000 have registered for Obamacare via the official government site, Healthcare.gov.
The Department of Health and Human Services said that number is wrong — that 51,000 have actually signed up, The Daily Mail reported. But no matter: Both numbers are still low when looked at through the lens of projections.
The Associated Press reported earlier this week that a HHS memo indicated that the government had actually set a goal of signing up 500,000 individuals per month, starting with Oct. 1.
The glitches over Obamacare enrollment are becoming quite an embarrassment for the White House.
Among the latest, as reported by The Daily Mail: Only 712 people in Vermont have been able to successfully enroll in the state exchange — despite the state spending about $9 million of taxpayer dollars to promote the online site. And Alaska continues to suffer a zero percentage rate. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said her state has yet to log in even one enrollee.
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Meanwhile, CNN reported that the government website to enroll has been spontaneously wiping out some enrollees’ passwords.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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