Good morning.
Happy Tech-Surge-To-Fix-Healthcare.gov Day in your nation's capital.
In the wake of a disastrous rollout of his legacy legislation, President Obama will speak in the White House Rose Garden later this morning to declare the problems unacceptable.
And to outline how the White House has dispatched an A-Team to fix glitches that have frustrated many of the 19 million Americans that have gone online to research or sign up for insurance coverage through Healthcare.gov.
Which, of course, begs the question, what team did the White House have working on the system from the start?
The president's effort to reassure Americans, and his party, that he can get Obamacare back on track will come after a weekend full court press to outline steps already being taken.
That effort included
a statement
In a
post on its blog
"We know using HealthCare.gov has been frustrating for many Americans. The initial consumer experience of HealthCare.gov has not lived up to the expectations of the American people. We are
committed to doing better
Here's what they say they've done:
- You can now
preview plans and prices
- You can find out, with an
improved calculator
-
You can apply for coverage 4 ways
- We've been adding educational online content where you tell us you need more information: About estimating your income, accounting for people in your household, eligibility rules, and more."
If you like, check out our
NPR insurance rate calculator
Reuters reports that the president
"will directly address
Over at CNN, the cable network lets its online
readers weigh in
Of the nearly half million applications reported by the White House, about half have been from the 36 states where the federal government is taking the lead in running the markets. The rest are from the 14 states and Washington, D.C., that have opted to run their own insurance exchange markets.
Top complaints? Can't log in, personal information not correct, costs too high, employers changing existing coverage.
MedicalDaily.com notes that although official Obamacare sign-up numbers won't be released until mid-November, the administration has said that more than 476,000 Americans have
applied.
We'll turn to the Associated Press now to put the
issue in context
Here's more: "Initially, administration officials blamed a high volume of interest for the frozen screens that many people encountered. Since then, the administration has also acknowledged unspecified problems with software and some elements of the system's design."
That being said, there is little doubt that there is great national interest in the insurance exchanges. The AP reports: "...about 19 million people had visited HealthCare.gov as of Friday night."
While criticism rains down in Washington, the politics of the health care legislation is playing out in states like Louisiana, where GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal is being urged by the New Orleans Time-Picayune to "
put people over politics
The editorial says: "Gov. Jindal's refusal to accept almost $16 billion in extra Medicaid money was destined to hurt thousands of low-income Louisiana residents who lack health insurance. That has been clear for months, as study after study - including the state's own — showed that tens of thousands of people would benefit if Louisiana accepted the Medicaid expansion that is part of President Obama's health care act."
The newspaper points to a recent
Kaiser Family Foundation
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the health care legislation, also asserted that states cannot be compelled to accept money for expanding Medicaid coverage of their poor.
Kaiser found "over five million poor uninsured adults have incomes above Medicaid eligibility levels but below poverty and may fall into a "coverage gap" of earning too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to qualify for Marketplace premium tax credits."
Writes the Times Picayune of Jindal, who has been looking at a White House run: "What a shame if the governor's ambitions were to trump his own people's needs."
Finally, Dan Diamond, writing at Forbes.com, says he and his research colleagues at the Advisory Board Company have been compiling state-level sign-up data, and here are
their latest takeaways
The 476,000 applications filed disproportionately come from a handful of states; California, Kentucky, New York and Washington may well be responsible for one-third of the applications on their own.
- The number of actual enrollees remains just a fraction of the applicants; while at least 192,042 applications had been filed across the 14 states and Washington D.C., only 54,575 people had picked a plan, pointing to the lag time in processing.
- A significant number of people applying—and signing up for coverage—are ending up in the Medicaid program, not private insurance.
Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit
http://www.npr.org/