If you have “enrolled” in something, that means you have “obtained” it, and if you have not yet paid for your health insurance, you are not insured or enrolled. This isn’t a debatable point among the intellectually honest, and yet this truth hasn’t stopped many in the mainstream media from assuming their natural position of  joining a White House propaganda push — which in this case is to artificially inflate news of public demand for ObamaCare.

Last month, the Obama administration itself admitted it was going to change the definition of “enrollee” into something it is not.  “In the data that will be released … ‘enrollment’ will measure people who have filled out an application and selected a qualified health plan in the marketplace,” a source told The Washington Post. Which is the kind of dishonesty we expect from President You-Can-Keep-Your-Insurance.

A legitimate and honest news media, however, would not blindly play along. And yet, among others, NBC News, Politico, and Reuters have eagerly engaged in the anti-science art of screaming good news about ObamaCare “enrollment” in their headlines.

But the headlines are a lie. The numbers being breathlessly reported are not enrollments, these are people who have only gone so far as to put an item in a shopping cart by, or as the Administration itself put it, “selected a qualified health plan in the marketplace.”

Selected is not enrollment any more than black is white.

For some context about just how far the media is going to carry the Administration’s water and mislead the public the public, studies show that more than two-thirds of online shoppers do not follow through with a purchase after placing an item in a shopping cart.

Moreover, the media are not even demanding or putting public pressure on the Administration to release the real enrollment figures. If you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor, our stenographers to power are instead panting at the feet of President Obama looking for a forgiving pat on the head.

Worse still, even as the media lies about the number of ObamaCare enrollments, the media is reporting on the fact that the backend of ObamaCare, including the part that pays insurance providers and sees to it that they get the right customer enrollment information, is an unmitigated disaster.

One insurance provider, Physicians Health Plan of Northern Indiana, reports that they have received payment from only 20% of applicants. How much of that 80% is due to people abandoning their shopping carts and will never pay, and how much is due to a Potemkin website that can’t follow through on what the front end promises to deliver?

And yet our unbiased, objective, not-at-all liberal media is falsely reporting that those 80% are enrolled, when they are not.

 But what else should we expect from a media that spent 3 years covering up the ugly truths about ObamaCare because they were too busy investigating Ann Romney’s horse, Mitt Romney’s 50 year-old pranks, and a racist rock painted over 25 years ago found on a property not owned by Rick Perry.

The media have absolutely no idea how many people have enrolled for ObamaCare, and like good dogs, they apparently don’t want to know. 

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC