Parsing Obamacare and Covered California sign

The big numbers are in, and highly publicized - because it's highly political. Eight million have signed up on Obamacare exchanges nationally under the Affordable Care Act for private insurance. That includes nearly 1.4 million in California.

But we still don't know key numbers, including how many have paid for coverage and how many are not just young, but young and healthy. In any insured population, it's necessary to have enough healthy enrollees to balance the cost of paying claims for those who are sick or injured.

Obamacare supporters often use the term 'young' as shorthand for young and healthy, but it's not yet known how healthy - or not - most of the new ACA enrollees are.

Officials at a Covered California press conference Thursday did estimate that 85 percent of those who signed up have paid, and that they 'hoped for more.' But that's still a squishy number, six and a half months into the Obamacare roll-out process.

It's hard not to sound like a broken record (or scratched CD) when parsing the numbers released by the White House, U.S. Health and Human Services department or Covered California, because all of them keep releasing the numbers they like, and find easy to explain, while keeping secret the numbers they don't like or find more difficult to explain.

As the New York Times noted in print this morning, for example, President Barack Obama is taking a second victory lap over the 8 million total, and the administration is highlighting the data point that 28 percent of those folks are between 18 and 34. But others say 35 percent to 40 percent would be a healthier number, actuarially speaking.

Chris Rauber's beats include health care, insurance and the wine industry for the San Francisco Business Times.

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