Ringers

[This post has been updated.  See below.]

An incident occurred this past week that deserves far more scrutiny than it has received so far.

The state’s Obamacare agency, MNsure, held a meeting of its Board of Directors last Wednesday.  As is the Board’s custom, the meeting was to begin with a story from a MNsure “customer.”

The Minnesota Jobs Coalition points out that the week’s success story turns out to be a paid consultant for the state’s Democrat party, Mike Sherman.

As I've documented before, this is not the first time (or the second) the MNsure “success” story turns out to be a partisan ringer.  But this time around, MNsure has dropped Northwoods icons Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox from its multi-million-dollar ad campaign in favor of testimonials from actual customers.

As I’ve also discussed before, the Board would be in much better shape if it listened to unsuccessful customers.  The disastrous rollout of the Affordable Care Act in Minnesota has gained the state a much-deserved national reputation for mismanagement.

[Updated:  It turns out that Mr. Sherman's insurance story has gone national.  He is featured at Organizing for Action's (OFA) Barack Obama.com site.  The photo used for "Michael" from Minnesota is the same photo Sherman uses as his profile picture on his employer's website and his Twitter profile pic.  The only question remains is "Who Found Mike First, MNsure or OFA?"  For the record, Michael tweeted his OFA-MN appearance on February 11th and his appearance at the MNsure Board meeting was scheduled for February 26.]

Now MNsure seeks to add misrepresentation to mismanagement.  If the Board cannot find success stories from somewhere other than ruling party’s payroll, then MNsure is in worse trouble than anybody believes.  Furthermore, with the hand-selected success stories turning out to be fakes—time after time—then why should we believe anything (enrollment figures, cost data, etc.) put out by MNsure?