we re at right now because we remember this exchange when it came to the delay. is march 31st a hard date when it comes to signing up for obamacare? listen. are you going to delay the mandate that individuals have to buy health care or pay a tax? no, sir. are you going to delay the open enrollment beyond march 31st? no, sir. well, as it turns out, they are going to delay. all you got to do is check the little blue box. what s interesting is kathleen sebelius not only probably going to feel the heat for that today, she s also received a letter from the house ways and means committee because she had said last time she testified in front of them that we have no idea the number of americans who have actually paid their premiums. you re not technically signed up for obamacare unless you paid your premiums. she said we don t know and yet, apparently the house, who has come into information where they ve discovered that the
particularly healthy people into the health insurance system right as that date approached. i think you ll see a similar thing nationally. going back to that deaf con four versus deaf con one analogy, you said if we don t hit that mark, we will be at deaf con one. tell me what that looks like. basically, if we can t if we don t have a system which makes it easy to enroll by march 31st, the individual mandate is seriously in peril. you can t make people sign up for something they can t shop for or enroll it. or penalize them. let s be clear what that means. the website part is really about the shopping. you need the website to shop. you can t compare these complicated options without the web. but you can enroll over the phone. that means a functional website, which allows people to effectively shop across their insurance options and sufficient resources, they can get on the phone and enroll once they ve picked the ones they like. i think it s important to go
it showed six people signed up for obama care on day one of the launch. less than 248 enrolled on day two. let s compare this to the launch of massachusetts health care plan where only 123 people signed up in the first month. by the end of the first year, 36,000 people. so bottom line, you want to reiterate that people just need to employ patience here? you know, i think we just need to not measure this in days and weeks but months and years. in massachusetts, i was on the board when we implemented the law. we only got a report monthly. i can t tell you how many signed up the first day. we had a three-year goal of ramping up to full implementation. it was going to take time to get there and ramp up slowly and it did. the key date to keep an eye on is march 31st. that s the day at which people have to be signed up to avoid the individual mandate. we found in massachusetts as that date approached, which in our state was december 31st, 2007, you saw a huge movement of