Is the right wing in deep, almost hopeless denial over Obamacare progress? You be the judge.
Below, via the alert watchdogs at Media Matters for America, is a graphic that Fox News posted during a broadcast on Monday. It’s pretty simple. On one side you have the number of people who had signed up for insurance via an Obamacare marketplace as of March 27, the last time the Administration offered an official number. On the other side you have the original projection, from the Congressional Budget Office, of what enrollment would be at the end of March. Here’s what it looks like:
Notice something funny? Here’s the same graphic, but with a baseline appropriately placed at zero.
The administration's official figures do not account for the fact that some portion of enrollees—probably around one in five—aren’t paying their premiums right away. But they also don’t account for the final days of open enrollment, during which, most likely, several hundred thousand more people will sign up for coverage.
By the way, the Fox graphic ran before an interview with Senator John Barrasso, who has been accusing the Obama Administration of “cooking the books” on the Affordable Care Act. Yeah, just let that one sink in for a while.