No joke: ObamaCare may have reached its enrollment goal after all

(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

last updated 8 January 2015

It seems reports of ObamaCare's death were greatly exaggerated. Following a surge of enrollments on Monday's deadline day, the health care law was on pace to hit its original 7 million enrollment target, according to the Associated Press. That surprising news came as some four million people logged on to Healthcare.gov or phoned the ObamaCare call center by 8 p.m. Monday, an administration official told NBC — all despite the fact that the website went down beneath a high visitor load early in the day.

The 7 million figure was the Congressional Budget Office's original estimate of how many people would enroll before the window closed. But after the law crashed out of the gate, that projection was scaled back to 6 million, a target the administration said it hit last week.

The news comes on the heels of two big surveys that showed support for ObamaCare on the rise; in a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday, a plurality for the first time said they supported the law. All of which is to say, once again: Republicans who had hoped to repeal the law may need a Plan B.