That's a verbatim quip that my wife made last week when I noted that the ACASignups.net spreadsheet had accurately called the actual number of private enrollments with 99% accuracy.
She was joking that perhaps the major news media was simply using the site as the source for their reporting, which would cause a bit of a "feedback loop" issue since we're using a lot of them as our sources, after all.
Cut to 6 days later:
Forbes Magazine, 12/25/13:
“The administration anticipated that 3.3 million people would use the exchanges to purchase private plans that take effect on January 1; however, the latest available data from acasignups.net and my own tracking suggests that about 2 million had used the exchanges to sign up for private coverage through the weekend.”
The Washington Post WonkBlog, 12/26/13:
Charles Gaba has been going to painstaking efforts to show the trajectory of health law sign-ups over the past three months. His graph (which is better viewed here, on his Web site) gives a helpful visual sense of what the last month has looked like for health-care enrollment. This uses all available data, including the monthly, federal reports and more up-to-date state data, too.
New York Magazine, 12/26/13:
(simple text link that doesn't actually name the site)
An estimated 1.82 million people have enrolled in private insurance since Obamacare's debut.
The good news: I seem to have hit my 15 minutes.
The bad news: I'm already bracing for the Tea Party Flying Monkey Onslaught that's sure to be on it's way any minute now.
Within a few hours I'm sure my FB and TW feeds will be filled with claims that I'm either George Soros' illegitimate son, Barak Obama's cousin or Nancy Pelosi's cabana boy, or something along those lines.
No doubt my citizenship and/or species preference for sexual encounters will be called into question in 3...2...1...
Seriously, though, while I'm obviously ubergeeked at the coverage (especially the irony of an anti-ACA outfit like Forbes using the site to try and lend evidence against the law's success), I'm also still bewildered that neither the HHS Dept. nor any of the major outlets like the NY Times, Wash Post, etc. are doing this sort of state-by-state daily update (or even weekly?) themselves.
I understood this during October, when things were so chaotic, but around the 5th or 6th week (when HHS did release their first official monthly report), they really should have started doing just what I'm doing (with the help of ArcticStones, ybruti, timmyc and a dozen others here at dKos). The fact that they still aren't is perplexing to me.
In fact, there were at least 2 other private sites that have been attempting to do the same thing. One was The Advisory Board Company, which gave up on November 6.
The other is EnrollMaven.com, which is still keeping at it, but has been pretty lackadaisical about it over the past few weeks, doesn't include any Medicaid info, doesn't include historical data or charts, and is terribly laid out making it confusing to find specific info. Now, they're openly and admittedly anti-ACA, but their sources and methodology have been sound so far. However, they're also about 1.1 million enrollments behind at the moment.
Anyway, just thought that was noteworthy.
Update: I also should give a shout-out to Greg Dworkin and other folks here at dKos who have helped spread the word, and again, especially to those who are helping with the crowdsourcing, including:
ArcticStones, about whom I can't give enough high praise; he's fed me about 2/3 of the total links and is the real star of the show;
ybruti, who's insight into California, Medi-Cal and Medicaid as a whole has been extremely helpful (thank her for most of the "orange cell specials" in the Medicaid column)
And a host of others who've been assisting (or at least trying to help), including Girdwood, page in seattle, MotherShipper, gchaucer2, Rolfyboy6, gloriasb, Mokurai, dadadata, mistletoe, Minnesota Deb, Bob the Old Soldier, CJB, timmyc, rsmpdx, pierre9045, rugbymom, Al Fondy, bastrop, "Ramu" and blue aardvark.
If I left anyone out, I apologize.
Note that the publicity about the site means that the pressure is now on to keep it going; I'd like to ask everyone who's been helping to redouble your efforts. Also, now that the word is out, there will be attacks on every conceivable angle about the numbers, so feel free to send me anything that seems like a legit source, just let me know if there's any special context needed for them.
Update: OK, not quite on the same level, but the Bangor Daily News just gave a nice shoutout as well. Guess I should've included a "Hi, Mom!" message on that graph...
