Measuring success of Obamacare exchanges based on clicks and eyeballs, what could go wrong?

Measuring success of Obamacare exchanges based on clicks and eyeballs, what could go wrong?

To say that the launch of the Obamacare exchanges was full of fail would be an understatement.

All we hear about is web traffic and clicks, but mostly silence about people actually enrolling.  Hey, remember the last time we measured success by clicks and eyeballs?

The Bubble 1.0 tide rose all boats. …[A] large portion of Bubble 1.0 companies didn’t even have business models. They were valued on such esoteric metrics as eyeballs, clicks, or page-views.

It seems the administration has been keen to cover-up the real numbers of Americans attempting to utilize the exchanges.

While the Obama administration has touted the opening of the Obamacare exchanges as a win for Americans, it is not releasing any data on the number of people who successfully enrolled Tuesday.

No matter the problem and the glitches, the national press is intent on spinning the chaos into a win for the administration’s signature program:

In some ways, the delays that persisted Wednesday were good news for President Barack Obama and supporters of his signature domestic policy achievement because the holdups showed what appeared to be exceptionally high interest in the overhauled insurance system. But if the glitches aren’t fixed quickly, they could dampen enthusiasm for the law at the same time Republicans are using it as a rallying cry to keep most of the federal government closed.

Meanwhile, back in my home state of California, the exchanges relied on old-fashioned fabrication to tout their success:

California’s health insurance exchange vastly overstated the number of online hits it received Tuesday during the rollout of Obamacare.

State officials said the Covered California website got 645,000 hits during the first day of enrollment, far fewer than the 5 million it reported Tuesday.

The state exchange had cited the 5 million figure as a sign of strong consumer interest and a major reason people had so much difficulty using its $313-million online enrollment system.

Dana Howard, a spokesman for Covered California, said the error was the result of internal miscommunication.

“Someone misspoke and thought it was indeed 5 million hits. That was incorrect,” he said.

Yeah, sure.

Still, it was better than the numbers for Louisiana: Louisiana’s top health-insurance provider said that not a single person enrolled in a new health-care plan offered through the Affordable Care Act on its first day.The background details are disturbing:

According to the newspaper, the company spent $60 million in preparation of the October 1 rollout, but the website continued to stall on the day of its rollout. One interested applicant spent five hours trying to get onto the site, but eventually resorted to calling a customer-service representative and was told she would receive plan options via e-mail.

But given that 55 percent of President Obama’s twitter followers are fake, the results are consistent with the tendency of Team Obama to paint a picture of success by using false numbers.

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