Report: More People Sign Up For Mars Trip Than ObamaCare

The Washington Times had an interesting take on the lack of enthusiasm and signups for ObamaCare compared to the amount of people who signed up for a trip to the Mars One colony project.

It was widely reported last week that only 36,000 people had successfully signed up for health insurance through the ObamaCare National and State Marketplaces. The Department of Health and Human Services issued a press release claiming that number was false and the real number was about 51,000. Whatever the actual number was, it certainly wasn’t enough of a difference to call attention to the Epic Fail that the ObamaCare web site is especially when the President set a goal of signing up 500,000 individuals per month.

The Times reported that The Daily Mail claimed that 202,586 individuals had successfully signed up for a program to colonize Mars - which should happen about the same time that the ObamaCare Marketplace actually signsup 500,000 individuals, let alone 500,000 in a month.

Given the massive amount of advertising and promotion devoted to the Marketplaces, and the fact that the Federal Government had 3 years to set the web site up and get all the bugs out, the lack of actual signups and the amount of downtime that the web site has had since its launch October 1^st is astounding.

The state of Vermont was given $9 Million to promote the Marketplace and only 712 residents signed up.

In Louisiana, the Federal Government allocated almost $2 Million (don’t know why we got so much less than Vermont – maybe it’s the “Jindal Effect”) for groups, primarily of the non-profit variety, to promote the Exchange and act as “Navigators”. Actual signup figures for Louisiana aren’t officially available as the Federal Government hasn’t released any state signup figures but insurance company officials speaking off the record claim the results are dismal.

“We’re actually losing money just on personnel costs that we allocated for the rush of applicants that the Federal Government projected we would need to process,” an insurance official said. “That ‘rush’ was nonexistent.”

As bad as things are in Louisiana, it could be worse – we could be Alaska.

According to Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, as of last week, not one Alaska resident had signed up for ObamaCare.

Zip. Zero. Nada.

Over the weekend, Obama Administration officials embarrassed by the actual figures reported that almost ½ Million had successfully signed up for ObamaCare.

Even CNN isn’t buying into that rosy forecast and noted that “an application is only the beginning of the process that leads to enrollment.”

CNN is estimating the figure at 257,000 signups. 

But, Insurance company officials don’t believe that estimate either.

“With all of the computer downtime, the multiple screens, the computer crashes, the time it takes for someone to complete the steps – it’s a wonder that anyone has signed up,” a Louisiana insurance company executive said.

Bloomberg is reporting that an estimated 5 Million lines of computer code need to be re-written on the web site. President Obama is expected to address some of the issues with the system today. 

I wonder if the Mars colonists get free health care?