WASHINGTON -- Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell says her agency made a mistake when it added dental-plan customers to recent figures on Obamacare enrollment. But Republicans say she owes them an explanation.
The disclosure by Ms. Burwell’s department that it accidentally added 380,000 people in dental plans to enrollment figures under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act provided a new opening for critics.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House committee that revealed the commingling of dental and health enrollment, said Ms. Burwell needs to clarify how the error happened. Her agency “must provide a clear and detailed account of who knew about this decision, and when they knew it,” he said.
Adding dental plans to health plan enrollment brought the total to 7.3 million as of Aug. 15 and 7.1 million two months later, department spokesman Kevin Griffis said in an e-mail. The two figures had previously been reported separately. Without dental, enrollment would have been just less than 7 million in August and was about 6.7 million in October, Mr. Griffis said.
Inclusion of the dental plans helped the total enrollment figure surpass the threshold of 7 million, the original projection for 2014 by the Congressional Budget Office. That number had been adopted by the government as a goal before sign-ups began in October 2013.
In social-media messages Thursday, Ms. Burwell didn’t provide details on how the error happened. “While we understand some will be skeptical, our clarity that this is mistake and the fact that we have quickly corrected the numbers should give people confidence,” she told MSNBC host Chris Hayes in a Facebook chat. Later in the same chat, echoing a post on her Twitter account, she called the mistake “unacceptable,” and said she is “communicating this clearly throughout the department.”
“We will be putting in place measures to ensure that this kind of mistake does not occur again after we understand why it happened,” she said.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who next year is expected to chair the Finance Committee that supervises Ms. Burwell’s department, called the government’s handling of enrollment numbers “creative accounting.” He added, “Despite claims by this White House that the health law and its execution have been transparent, the facts continue to tell a different story. The American people deserve better.”
Administration allies, while dismayed, said the error shouldn’t overshadow the law’s success at expanding insurance coverage.
Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA and a supporter of the law, agreed in a phone interview that the department’s revisions of the enrollment numbers “may affect how the public may view things. I’m sure it has some impact.” But in the long run, he said, point-in-time enrollment figures provide little information and shouldn’t be used to judge the Affordable Care Act’s success. Instead, he watches the proportion of Americans without insurance, which has fallen about 4 percentage points this year to 13.4 percent, according to Gallup Inc.
“The data I think is most significant is what is happening with respect to the uninsured,” Mr. Pollack said. Whether 7.1 million or 6.7 million, monthly data on enrollment in private plans under the law “doesn’t tell you a whole lot,” he said.
First Published: November 21, 2014, 5:00 a.m.
