ObamaCare reaches moment of truth By Elise Viebeck and Jonathan Easley The moment of truth is approaching for the troubled ObamaCare portal HealthCare.gov. The Obama administration has set a deadline of Nov. 30 for fixing the site, leaving officials with little more than a week to finish critical repairs. While progress is being made in getting the site up to speed, officials have indicated they do not expect all users to have a smooth experience online the weekend after Thanksgiving. President Obama desperately needs the Affordable Care Act IT team to turn the troubled rollout around. Democrats have made clear they will back changes to the healthcare law if HealthCare.gov is still floundering on Dec. 1. Public support for the healthcare overhaul, meanwhile, is slipping under the barrage of bad news. If ObamaCare’s popularity continues to fall, it could discourage people from entering the new insurance exchanges — potentially creating the long-feared “death spiral” for the coverage plans. Republicans say ObamaCare’s troubles are just beginning, and argue the rescue of HealthCare.gov will only delay the inevitable: a wholesale retreat from the law by Democrats in 2014. Another delay: The Obama administration is planning to delay ObamaCare’s second-year enrollment period until after the 2014 elections, according to multiple reports. The move will help distance the sign-up period from the Nov. 4 midterms, which Democrats fear will become a referendum on the reform law’s botched rollout. It is possible that most consumers will not know their 2015 ObamaCare premiums until after they go to the polls because of the shift in dates. The decision could also set the stage for the administration to extend ObamaCare’s current sign-up period amid ongoing problems with the federal enrollment website. Warning signs: Officials in charge of implementing the HealthCare.gov website feared a “meltdown” similar to the botched rollout of a 2005 program in the days leading up to Oct. 1, according to emails obtained by congressional Republicans. Five days before the website was set to launch, Henry Chao, deputy chief information officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), sent out an urgent email in all caps to get his staff’s attention. “I DO NOT WANT A REPEAT OF WHAT HAPPENED NEAR THE END OF DECEMBER 2005 WHERE MEDICARE.GOV HAD A MELTDOWN (THIS IS TO GET YOUR ATTENTION IF I DIDN’T HAVE IT ALREADY,” he said in an email on Sept. 26. Chao’s email was in response to a briefing that several performance stress tests of the website were “not good” or inconsistent, according to an email by Akhtar Zaman, who works in the CMS Office of Information Services. The emails released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee are the latest in a series of documents House Republicans have dripped out regarding the days leading up to the botched rollout. The fix is in: The White House is moving forward with part of its ObamaCare fix designed to promote the law’s benefits to consumers. The administration has unveiled a letter that will be sent to people who have the option of continuing health policies that would otherwise be canceled under ObamaCare for one year. Most of the policies will not meet the law’s new coverage standards, a fact the White House wants to highlight to the public. The move is part of a wider policy meant to quell the firestorm over millions of health plans being canceled on the individual market as ObamaCare takes effect. Losing faith: Democrats’ support for ObamaCare sunk dramatically in the last month as the new insurance exchanges experienced serious technical problems, according to a new survey. A monthly tracking poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) found that 55 percent of Democrats now support the Affordable Care Act, compared with 70 percent in October. Sticker shock: Older congressional staffers say their out-of-pocket healthcare costs will rise three or four times after they enter the ObamaCare insurance exchanges. The economic shock has led Democratic chiefs of staff to call for changing the rules so that their staffers won’t take the economic hit.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 23:18:53 +0000
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