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By now you have certainly heard about Cato’s brief filed in the Susan B. Anthony case before the Supreme Court, authored by Ilya Shapiro, that makes references to Stephen Colbert and “truthy.” It was such a good brief that an Article III judge sent a note to Ilya about the brief. Except it went to the wrong Ilya–Ilya Somin received it.

Somin replied, with a carbon copy to Shapiro, “I wish I could take credit. But it actually isn’t my brief. It was coauthored by Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute, whom I cc here.”

On Wednesday, Aaron Streett made his first argument at One First Street in Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc.  And for his first argument, he argued alongside David Boies and Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart!

You can listen to the audio here. Congratulations Aaron!

Here are some shaky clips I captured from my recent appearance on Houston PBS Red, White, and Blue talking about the Supreme Court.

Here is a picture from the set, with the hosts, Gary Pollard, Linda Lorelle, and Davide Jones.

On the Red, white, and blue set talking about the supreme court pic.twitter.com/y5eJOjMEep

— Josh Blackman (@JoshMBlackman) February 20, 2014

Avik Roy breaks down a very difficult metric the government seems to have no interest in measuring–how many people who signed up for Obamacare were previous uninsured:

McKinsey, the leading management consulting firm, has been conducting monthly surveys of the exchange-eligible population under the auspices of its Center for U.S. Health System Reform. McKinsey’s most recent survey, conducted in February with 2,096 eligible respondents, found that only 48 percent had thus far signed up for a 2014 health plan. Within that 48 percent, three-fifths were previously insured people who liked their old plans and were able to keep them. The remaining two-fifths were the ones who signed up for coverage on the Obamacare exchanges.

Of the Obamacare sign-ups, only 27 percent had been previously uninsured in 2013. And of the 27 percent, nearly half had yet to pay a premium. (By contrast, among the 73 percent who had been previously insured, 86 percent had paid.)

Put all those percentages together, and you get two key stats. Only 19 percent of those who have paid a premium were previously uninsured. Among those that the administration is touting as sign-ups, only 14 percent are previously uninsured enrollees: approximately 472,000 people as of February 1.

And why are the previously uninsured people not signing up? Because it is now too expensive–thanks to Obamacare.

Here’s an important finding from McKinsey. The authors of the study—Amit Bhardwaj, Erica Coe, Jenny Cordina, and Mahi Rayasam—asked those who decided not to enroll in a plan what their reasons were for doing so. The most frequent reason—cited by 50 percent of respondents—was that “I could not afford to pay the premium.” Only 27 percent cited technical challenges; 14 percent said they couldn’t find a plan that met their needs. 21 percent said they were still deciding.

This is the biggest problem with the way the “Affordable Care Act” approached coverage expansion. The reason why so many Americans are uninsured is because health insurance in this country is too expensive. Obamacare increases the underlying cost of health insurance, and then uses taxpayer-funded subsidies to offset those costs for some.

Plus, you have to consider that nearly 5 million Americans had their policies cancelled–with many more future cancellations, notwithstanding the most recent decision to extend ineligible plans till 2016.

Keep in mind another fact: According to the Associated Press, at least 4.7 million Americans who shop for coverage on their own have had their plans canceled because they don’t conform to Obamacare’s regulations. So Obamacare has disrupted the coverage of millions of Americans, requiring many to purchase costlier policies with higher deductibles and narrower doctor networks, for a fairly modest expansion of coverage.

According to the administration, total sign-ups now exceed 4 million. But on a recent HHS conference call, Obamacare implementation point man Gary Cohen was asked the key question: how many of the people who have signed up for Obamacare were previously insured? His response: “That’s not a data point that we are really collecting in any sort of systematic way.”

So. The whole point of Obamacare was to expand coverage to the uninsured. But for the tens of thousands of regulations that the law has imposed on the country, its authors never bothered to try to measure the one thing that they were actually trying to achieve. That about sums it all up.

This is a pretty good outline for the sequel for my next book on Obamacare, Unraveled.

This column has analyzed the disaster of ObamaCare in terms of three phases. Phase 1, the technical failure, was evident as soon as open enrollment began on Oct. 1 and many of the exchange websites proved to have been incompetently designed. Technical problems continue to emerge, including, as noted here last week, the Internal Revenue Service’s tardiness in preparing the final instructions for Form 8960, which taxpayers must file if they owe the new ObamaCare “net investment income tax.”

Phase 2 is the revelation that ObamaCare’s central promise–“if you like your plan, you can keep your plan”–was fraudulent. In an effort to appease defrauded consumers, the Obama administration has announced a series of unlegislated exceptions to the law, which the president himself attempted to explain the other day….

Even the New York Timesacknowledges as much in an editorial today:

Ideally, President Obama would not have extended the period for retaining the less-comprehensive policies, but in the current political environment, he opted to take a step to protect health care reform against a Republican takeover in the Senate.

…

The third phase of failure is the slow revelation that the basic economic assumptions behind ObamaCare are wrong. A new survey from McKinsey & Co., conducted in February, found that only 10% of those who lacked insurance pre-ObamaCare had signed up for an exchange plan, and that of those who had signed up, just 27% were previously uninsured.

True, those numbers were up significantly from January’s figures, 3% and 11% respectively. Still, they’re low enough that the Washington Post sums it up: “The new health insurance marketplaces appear to be making little headway in signing up Americans who lack insurance, the Affordable Care Act’s central goal.”

Of late, I am now leaning towards writing the book to coincide with the 2016 election. That should be good timing.