Health in­sur­ance com­pan­ies say the num­ber of people who paid their Obama­care premi­ums will be high­er than House Re­pub­lic­ans im­plied.

The House En­ergy and Com­merce Com­mit­tee said last week that, based on in­form­a­tion it re­ceived from in­surers, only 67 per­cent of people who signed up for private cov­er­age through Obama­care’s ex­changes had gone on to pay their first month’s premi­um.

Con­ser­vat­ives have fix­ated on the num­ber of un­paid premi­ums, ar­guing that the White House’s stat­ist­ics — 8 mil­lion people have se­lec­ted a plan — are mean­ing­less. Con­sumers aren’t truly en­rolled un­til they pay their first premi­um, so the num­ber of paid en­roll­ments is in­deed a more ac­cur­ate pic­ture of how many people the law’s ex­changes are cov­er­ing.

But this week, in writ­ten testi­mony to the same com­mit­tee, in­surers say the 67 per­cent fig­ure was pre­ma­ture — and that they warned the com­mit­tee not to draw sweep­ing con­clu­sions from the in­form­a­tion it re­ques­ted.

En­ergy and Com­merce’s fig­ure in­cluded people who signed up for cov­er­age but whose first premi­um hadn’t come due at the time of the com­mit­tee’s in­quiry. And that’s a lot of people.

Well­point, the largest in­surer in the Obama­care ex­changes, said the pay­ment rate is closer to 90 per­cent among people who reached their first pay­ment dead­line. The com­pany has giv­en in­vestors the same es­tim­ate.

Health Care Ser­vice Corp., which ad­min­is­ters Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in sev­er­al states, told the com­mit­tee the same thing: Of plans that have reached their pay­ment dead­lines, about 80 per­cent to 90 per­cent are paid en­roll­ments.

En­ergy and Com­merce asked in­surers for their total num­ber of sign-ups and the total num­ber of paid en­roll­ments as of April 15. And that num­ber was in­deed around 70 per­cent, in­surers said. But nearly 1 mil­lion people chose plans in April. Their first bill wasn’t due yet on April 15, but En­ergy and Com­merce went ahead and coun­ted them as un­paid sign-ups.

The com­mit­tee’s 67 per­cent fig­ure will re­main true only if none of those people make their first pay­ment. And that seems un­likely: In­surers said their 80 per­cent to 90 per­cent pay­ment rate was con­sist­ent across all six months of the open-en­roll­ment peri­od.

In­surers said they noted the lim­its of the in­form­a­tion when the com­mit­tee re­ques­ted it.

“As out­lined in our pri­or sub­mis­sions to the Sub­com­mit­tee, these are dy­nam­ic fig­ures and do not re­flect fi­nal en­roll­ment num­bers, as some en­rollees have not yet reached their pay­ment,” Aet­na said in writ­ten testi­mony for a Wed­nes­day hear­ing on the health care law and the in­sur­ance in­dustry.

Aet­na also said the num­ber of paid en­roll­ments, among plans where pay­ment has come due, av­er­aged “in the low- to mid-80 per­cent range.”

En­ergy and Com­merce in­vest­ig­at­ors have asked in­sur­ance com­pan­ies to provide up­dated in­form­a­tion later this month.

If 80 to 90 per­cent end up pay­ing their first premi­um, true en­roll­ment will be around 6.4 mil­lion to 7.2 mil­lion — still more than the Con­gres­sion­al Budget Of­fice ex­pec­ted for the law’s first year, and far more than most ex­perts thought pos­sible after the dis­astrous launch of Health­Care.gov.

The White House has cri­ti­cized the En­ergy and Com­merce re­port but has not re­leased pay­ment fig­ures of its own, des­pite months of ques­tions from the press. Of­fi­cials say they won’t have a re­li­able es­tim­ate un­til they fin­ish build­ing an­oth­er part of the Health­Care.gov in­fra­struc­ture.