'The debate over repealing this law is over': Obama boasts 7.1 MILLION have signed up to Obamacare - but study shows just 858,000 newly insured Americans have paid up!

President took a major victory lap and took political shots at Republicans, but ignored shortcomings in his administration's official numbers



Press secretary Jay Carney will only say 'we're aggregating a lot of data' when asked how many enrollees have paid for coverage

Carney dodged questions about damning study that showed very few Obamacare customers were uninsured before the law took effect

Percentages from a hush-hush RAND Corporation study suggest barely 858,000 previously uninsured Americans have enrolled and paid premiums

HHS Secretary Sebelius met a televised challenge Monday about 'unpopular' Obamacare with lengthy awkward silence

A triumphant President Barack Obama declared Tuesday his signature medical insurance overhaul a success, saying it has made America's health care system 'a lot better' in a Rose Garden press conference.

But buried in the 7.1 million enrollments he announced in a heavily staged appearance is a more unsettling reality.



Numbers from a RAND Corporation study that has been kept under wraps suggest that barely 858,000 previously uninsured Americans – nowhere near 7.1 million – have paid for new policies and joined the ranks of the insured by Monday night.

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Barack Obama spoke about Affordable Care Act enrollment totals at the White House but took no questions, as Vice President Joe Biden stood by wordlessly and applauded

an ebullient Jay Carney, fresh from greeting his hometown world-champion Boston Red Sox, bragged about the administration's signup totals -- but hid the ball on thorny questions that could unravel the celebration

Others were already insured, including millions who lost coverage when their existing policies were suddenly cancelled because they didn't meet Obamacare's strict minimum requirements. Still, he claimed that 'millions of people who have health insurance would not have it' without his insurance law.' 'The goal we’ve set for ourselves – that no American should go without the health care they need ... is achievable,' Obama declared.

The president took no questions from reporters, but celebrated the end of a rocky six-month open-enrollment period by taking pot shots at Republicans who have opposed the law from the beginning as a government-run seizure of one-seventh of the U.S. economy.

'The debate over repealing this law is over,' he insisted. 'The Affordable Care Act is here to stay.' The president also chided conservatives 'who have based their entire political agenda on repealing it,' and praised congressional Democrats for their partisan passage of the law without a single GOP vote.

'We could not have done it without them, and they should be proud of what they've done,' Obama boasted, in a clear nod to November's contentious elections in which Republicans are expected to make large gains on an anti-Obamacare platform because of the law's general lack of popularity.



'In the end,' he warned the GOP, 'history is not kind to those who would deny Americans their basic economic security. ... That's what the Affordable Care Act represents.'



'“The bottom line is this,' said Obama: 'The share of Americans with insurance is up, and the growth in the cost of insurance is down. There’s no good reason to go back.'

Republicans will differ with that assessment as Election Day nears. They need to gain a net total of six Senate seats in order to reclaim the majority and control both houses of Congress, a goal that appears reachable since two-thirds of the seats being contested are held by Democratic incumbents.



No national political analyst has predicted a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives.



White House press secretary Jay Carney stopped short of saying 'I told you so,' but chided a sparse press corps in the briefing room at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for ever doubting that the Obamacare system would enroll more than 7 million Americans.

Debate is over? Republicans stand to make huge gains in the U.S. Senate in November, and increase their margin in the House, largely on the strength of Americans' weariness with Obamacare -- but the president for the first time Tuesday went out of his way to thank Democrats for making it happen

Still growing: The 'final' enrollment day for Obamacare saw long lines and eleventh-hour panic, but the administration has rolled out a red carpet for latecomers who are willing to check a box and swear they tried to sign up on time Triumphant: Obama appears to have made good on his signature legislative pledge, but the numbers don't bear out his promises of insuring millions of uninsured Americans

'At midnight last night we surpassed everyone's expectations,' he boasted, 'at least everyone in this room.'

While he took great pains to emphasize that the total would grow – saying 'we're still waiting on data from state exchanges' – he dodged tough questions about other statistics that reporters thought he should have had at the ready.



Those numbers included how many Americans have paid for their insurance policies, and are actually insured. Also, he had no answer to the thorny question of how few signups represented people who had no insurance before the Affordable Care Act took effect.

Aside from the issue of the numbers' likely decrease when non-paying enrollments are taken into account, administration officials have been coy about the RAND Corporation study, which suggests that relatively few Obamacare enrollees were previously uninsured.

'What I can tell you is that we expect there to be a good mix of people who were previously uninsured who now have insurance,' Carney said Monday.

'Certainly, there’s a significant number who now have qualified for Medicaid in those states that expanded Medicaid who will have insurance who didn’t have it before.'

In addition to his claim of 7.1 million enrollments, Obama also announced that 'three million young people' under age 26 have gained coverage as add-ons to their parents' policies. and 'millions more ... gained access through Medicaid expansion,' he said.

Those totals – young adults attached to their parents' insurance and new taxpayer-funded Medicaid subscribers – far exceed the 7.1 million number the White House trumpeted on Tuesday.

The Affordable Care Act carried with it the promise of covering 'every American,' and it appears to have fallen tremendously short.

Obama and Biden rolled their political party's dice on the Affordable Care Act, and despite Tuesday's fanfare the results are falling short of their campaign promises 'We're aggregating a lot of data,' Carney insisted, refusing to comment on how many Obamacare enrollments came complete with payments, and how few of the customers already had insurance before the law took effect

The unpublished RAND study – only the Los Angeles Times has seen it – found that just 23 per cent of new enrollees had no insurance before signing up.

And of those newly insured Americans, just 53 per cent have paid their first month's premiums.

If those numbers hold, the actual net gain of paid policies among Americans who lacked medical insurance in the pre-Obamacare days would be just 858,298.

Obama's Rose Garden speech included an acknowledgement that the Affordable Care Act 'has had its share of problems,' and has at times been 'contentious and confusing ... That's part of what change looks like in a Democracy.'

But 'there are still no death panels,' he joked amid laughter. 'Armageddon has not arrived.'

A standing ovation greeted him after his speech. A White House aide said the crowd consisted of '"organizations and stakeholder groups who helped lead the enrollment and outreach efforts, as well as Hill lawmakers and staff from HHS, CMS and other agencies involved in implementing the ACA.'

Not among them: Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathlen Sebelius, the administration official most responsible for the Obamacare program's implementation. She also did not appear in the White House press briefing room earlier in the afternoon.



But Carney and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough distributed donuts to reporters in the press center on Tuesday morning – presumably without checking with the first lady – and eagerly pitched talking points to journalists writing about the milestone day.



Questions remain about the effectiveness and affordability of Obama's plan, which he sold to congressional Democrats and the American people as a scheme to cover the uninsured, and about how the law is contributing to the spiraling cost of medical care.

'The Affordable Care Act is here to stay,' Obama declared, laying down a marker for Republicans who favor repealing or gutting the law

Rose Garden no-show: Kathleen Sebelius appeared on an Oklahoma TV station on Monday to buck up Obamacare's flagging numbers in the Sooner State, and had only a blank-stare response to the law's unpopularity -- she was nowhere to be seen as Obama took his victory lap

As information about the chasm between Obamacare's promises and its reality have reached the public, the program has become more and more unpopular – a fact that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius met with awkward silence during a Monday television interview in Oklahoma.

'At last check, 64 percent of Oklahomans aren't buying into the healthcare plan; they don't like Obamacare, and they've been pretty vocal about it,' a KWTV-9 reporter told her.



'Now that's going to be – still continue to be a tough sell, but we'll see how that plays out over the coming months.'

Sebelius, a deer trapped in TV's headlights, offered only a blank stare. Asked if she had lost the audio feed, the icy secretary responded, 'I can hear you. But I – thanks for having me.'

Hours earlier, she tooted Obama's horn during a fawning Huffington Post interview, claiming that healthcare.gov saw a surge in traffic when the president appeared on the gonzo show 'Between Two Ferns' on the Funny or Die website.

Obamacare 'definitely saw the Galifianakis bump,' she said, referring to the show's host Zach Galifianakis.



' As a mother of two 30-something sons, I know they're more likely to get their information on "Funny or Die" than they are on network TV,' she added.

Americans who missed the online broadcast still knew enough to queue up Monday for panic-induced sign-ups. Crushed with traffic, healthcare.gov crashed twice.

'Between Two Ferns': the President of the United States gave a March 11 interview to comedian Zach Galifianakis, at a time when political reporters often fight to get a single question answered by one of Barack Obama's surrogates

The Obama administration's health care website stumbled on deadline day for new sign-ups. Visitors to HealthCare.gov on Monday morning saw messages that the site was down for maintenance





On its way to 7 million, the Obama administration has never answered some key questions about the open enrollment period.

The White House has instead kept to its talking points.

'What I can tell you is that we expect there to be a good mix of people who were previously uninsured who now have insurance,' Carney said Monday.

'Certainly, there’s a significant number who now have qualified for Medicaid in those states that expanded Medicaid who will have insurance who didn’t have it before.'

The midnight deadline for enrollment has become a temporary formality, as the Obama administration has offered extensions to anyone willing to claim they tried in earnest to sign up in time.

Sebelius promised Congress weeks ago that there would be no extension.



The White House has compared it to voters who are permitted to cast ballots if they are in line when the polls close. But conservative opponents note that ballot officials won't accept voters' claims the day after an election.