No doubt you’ll be shocked and surprised, but it appears the Obama Administration may be lying about the number of people who have actually gotten health care coverage under Obamacare.

I know, I know. Totally unexpected.

As usual with government-issued numbers, it’s all in who’s doing the counting and what method they’re using.

According to President Obama, who was so excited on Tuesday that he was practically jumping like a poodle, a whopping 7.1 million people have signed up for the dysfunctional health care program through one of the federal or state governments’ dysfunctional websites.

Just in case it’s been forgotten or buried by the media, it was a figure of between 35 million and 40 million uninsured Americans that was most commonly cited as justification for Obamacare. And that 7.1 million figure is not all formerly uninsured people. It would be a surprise if half of them were.

Nonetheless, the White House has broken out the trumpets and announced victory.

A very different picture and set of numbers emerges from an unpublished Rand Corp. study that was leaked to the Los Angeles Times.

The Times interestingly used that report to claim that Obamacare has insured 9 million previously uninsured people. The Times report came out a day before President Obama claimed it was 7.1 million, yep. (He actually said “yep” in his press conference announcing the numbers.) Clearly, something fishy is going on at the Times.

Forbes printed an article about the same Rand study without being too specific about the not-yet-released report. From that report what can be gleaned is that about one-third of Obamacare enrollees were previously uninsured, but only about 53 percent of those have actually paid their first premium and begun coverage. So that comes out to around 1.25 million previously uninsured people who have become covered because of Obamacare.

We won’t know for sure if that’s the correct number until Rand stops being hush-hush with its study. However, assuming that figure’s in the ballpark, while 1.25 million is a lot of people, it’s miles short of the 35 million-plus uninsured claimed as the Obamacare impetus and goal.

A Blaze article tossed out the number 858,000 of previously uninsured paying for coverage, based on the Rand report “reviewed” by the Times. Comments on the Times article also cited the same figure. If that figure ever appeared in the Times article, it appears to have since been removed.

The UK Daily Mail also cites the 858,000 figure and cites the Rand report as the source.

Meanwhile, the rest of the media predictably are cheerleading for Obamacare and claiming “huge” numbers, even exceeding what the White House has said.

Whatever figure turns out to be true, it’s bound to be orders of magnitude different from what’s being proclaimed.

But even if the White House signed up all the uninsured today, Obamacare would still be a disaster.

There are many reasons to say that, but the most vital is that Obamacare is a government program that people are being coerced to buy into, under pain of severe financial penalty. And the most immediate result has been a loss of jobs and work hours for many people.

This is not the same as just paying your taxes and grumbling because you don’t like some of the things the government spends money on. This is more akin to being drafted against your will. The government tells you to sign up, then it tells you what you can and can’t do in the program, and it’s up to the government whether it will let you ever get back to your own life.

With Obamacare, you’re forced to participate (although you do have one option, to pay a hefty fine-slash-tax), then the government tells you which doctor you can see, what care you can receive and so on. And once you’re in, you’re not getting out unless you die.

It’s not like government can never have a role in health care, but it should be up to the patient if he wants to participate in a government program, and such programs should be reserved for the truly needy, not forced on everybody because they are designed to pad the legacy of the current Oval Office holder.