Despite HHS’ refusal to provide any figures about Obamacare policy purchase rates—they’re still routinely touting Healthcare.gov visit rates and account creation rates as though those numbers mean anything—some information is trickling out.  The Daily Caller has some of those data.

Here are some of the cancellation numbers:

• Insurance carrier Florida Blue cancelled 300,000 policies—80% of Florida’s individual coverage policies
• California’s Kaiser Permanente canceled 160,000 plans—half of its insurance plans in the state
• Blue Shield of California sent 119,000 notices in mid-September alone
• Insurance Highmark in Pittsburgh plan to cancel 20% of their total plans
• Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia plan to cancel 45% of their total plans
• 800,000 plans in New Jersey will be cancelled by the start of 2014

This compares with Obamacare sign-ups—anecdotal data to be sure, since the Obamacare administration, as I noted above, refuses to provide any figures at all:

• South Dakota reported that 23 people enrolled in the exchanges
• North Dakota enrolled 20
• Alaska has enrolled 7

The Daily Mail reported two weeks ago that, from its own sources, all of 51,000 Americans had signed up in the first week (since then, the government has really clamped down on leaks about its numbers).  If we optimistically double that rate as Healthcare.gov starts to get its software…kinks…worked out, we get an additional 250,000 actually signed up by now.  Even quadrupling that first week rate—to 460,000 by now—leaves the sign-ups far short of the cancellations, with more cancellations yet to come.

Hmm….

Earlier, I wrote about Senator Tim Scott’s (R, SC) concerns about the broader picture of the Obamacare failure.  It seems Scott was optimistic in some respects.  Jerry Markon, in The Washington Post, has written about the already ongoing failure Obamacare’s insurance co-ops, which are different from the exchanges that some states have set up and which the Federal government, under the auspices of Obamacare, has set up in 36 states and set loose on an unsuspecting public (that HealthCare.gov thingie).

These co-ops are

a network of nonprofit insurance companies aimed at bringing competition to the marketplace, long dominated by major insurers.

But these co-ops, started as a great hope for lowering insurance costs, are already in danger.

The danger is clear and present:

One co-op, however, has closed, another is struggling, and at least nine more have been projected to have financial problems, according to internal government reviews and a federal audit.

Their failure would leave taxpayers potentially on the hook for nearly $1 billion in defaulted loans and rob the marketplace of the kind of competition they were supposed to create.  And if they become insolvent, policyholders in at least half the states where the co-ops operate could be stuck with medical bills.

That’s out of roughly 24 in 24 states.

Worse, these operations were designed to fail: the then-Democrat dominated Congress loaded these entities with restrictions that, individually, elevated the risks for their survival, and in the aggregate, made their survival nearly impossible.

• Federal grants for the co-ops were converted to loans with tight repayment schedules
• co-ops were barred from using federal money for marketing
• co-ops were severely limited from selling insurance to large employers…the most lucrative market

And so on.  This is one of the outcomes of central control of an economy—or even one-sixth of one.

Here’s another installment in President Barack Obama’s late night cable shill Rose Garden 800 number pitch (Operators are standing by!):

The online chat functionality turns out to be as dysfunctional as his 800 number—although, in fairness to the pitchman, he didn’t push the chat bit.  In an example excerpted on YouTube, you can see agent “Dean” advising a customer, “Adrian:”

Don’t lose your sanity over this website.  Try it.  If it doesn’t work, walk away.  Try it tomorrow.

and

Don’t run with scissors.

The transcript of the complete 12-minute chat is here (scroll down).  As you read it, notice two things: one is the admission of using canned answers, together with their near-irrelevance to the questions being asked.  The other is Agent Dean hanging up on Adrian in mid-chat.

This is government customer service, government medicine style.