House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa held yet another "oversight" hearing on Thursday, trying to find something, anything that smelled like an Obamacare scandal. Instead, he got the gut-punch of finding out that there are officially 7.3 million paid up enrollees, beating the Congressional Budget Office's prediction of 6 million.

"As of Aug. 15 this year, we have 7.3 million Americans enrolled in health insurance marketplace coverage and these are individuals who paid their premiums. We are encouraged by the number of consumers who paid their premiums and continue to enroll in the marketplace coverage every day through special enrollment periods," [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn] Tavenner said. […]Compared to the enrollment total of 8 million detailed in a May report about the sign-up period that began last October, the retention rate for private Obamacare coverage would be more than 90 percent.However, because people have been allowed to buy health insurance on the exchanges since then under special circumstances, such as marriage or the birth of a child, the count of people who were enrolled at any given time this year likely rose higher than 8 million.

There's always a lot of change in enrollments numbers, as people's life circumstances change and they move in and out of coverage because of marriage, new employment or loss of a job, and retirement. So 7.3 million paid enrollments is just about where you'd expect it to be following the 8 million enrollment figure from May.Read More.Source: Daily Kos/Joan McCarter