What do all these numbers mean? For one thing, it means that about half of the 6.3 million new Medicaid enrollees from October 1 to December 31 are not beneficiaries of ObamaCare, which means the President’s “more than nine million” figure is a gross exaggeration.

(Remember, also, that states sign up millions of people for Medicaid every month and that enrollees are constantly going on and off the program—what’s called “churn”—so the numbers of applications and enrollments in each state should be understood in that context.)

The rest of the “more than nine million” are those who have selected a private insurance plan on one of the ObamaCare exchanges—selected, not purchased. The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services is not releasing data about how many people have paid their first month’s premium and are in fact insured, so there is no way to know for sure.

But even assuming that most of those who select a plan have actually paid for it, the numbers are still remarkably low.