During her Monday night appearance on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was unable to provide a firm answer to Jon Stewart’s question about federal enrollment numbers for Obamacare:
Jon Stewart: "How many have signed up thus far?"
Sebelius: "Fully enrolled? I can't tell you. Because I don't know. We are taking applications on the web, on the phone. We'll be giving monthly reports but I can tell you, we've had not only lots of web hits, hundreds of thousands of accounts created."
Stewart: "So hundreds of thousands of people have signed up?"
Sebelius: "Of accounts created. Which means that then they're going to go shopping."
Stewart: "What?"
As shown by this timeline compiled by Americans for Tax Reform, the Obama administration has been cagey on the question since enrollment began on Oct. 1.
At the end of Monday’s White House press briefing, spokesman Jay Carney said enrollment reports would be released “monthly” but when pressed on a specific release date, Carney said he didn’t know:
Reporter: “I just wanted to pin something down here. You said that we could expect monthly reports on the enrollments in the Affordable Care Act. So, just so we can plan – will that be on the one-month anniversary which would be the first, or the next business day…”
Carney: “I’d refer you to CMS and HHS. I’m not sure when that begins. But I’m sure we’ll let you know in plenty of time so you can plan and put it in your calendar.”
Americans for Tax Reform has launched a petition drive for taxpayers to send a message to President Obama to immediately release the enrollment data. The petition can be found at http://obamacarecoverup.com/