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Tag: healthcare.gov

  • Health Insurance Enrollment: Will Obamacare Improve?

    Health insurance enrollment is never an easy process, and if we learned anything from last year’s Obamacare enrollment fiasco, it should only be uphill from here.

    But will it?

    Obamacare health insurance enrollment opens up on November 15th.

    Experts say it looks like the experience will be an improvement over last year. Since consumers encountered error messages and ridiculously long waits online, the administration is hoping this year’s enrollment will be smoother.

    Health insurance enrollment on Healthcare.gov is on track to be easier to use and even a little quicker than last year. The website has even undergone more than five weeks’ worth of testing. A complete battery compared with just 10 measly days before last year’s embarrassing rollout.

    There should also be a more streamlined process now for health insurance enrollment, as consumers will face as few as 16 screens of questions, compared with as many as 76 for people who applied for plans last year.

    According to Bankrate.com, 7.3 million Americans who got covered through the exchanges during the last signup season should be able to find better plans that cost less this time around.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m2gDTVulyE

    However, if you’re intending to let last year’s plan renew automatically without revisiting the health insurance enrollment websites, there could be a few issues with cancelled plans and changes in doctor and hospital networks.

    Stemming from last year’s issues, consumers might be a little leery of seeking health insurance enrollment through the government website or the exchanges.

    Those advocating for Obamacare say this is no time to lose faith in the system.

    “We really urge consumers to go to their marketplace and shop for new coverage,” says Rachel Klein, director of organizational strategies for Families USA, a nonprofit health care consumer group. “Not only are there new plans and prices available, but you also need to update your income information so you get the correct amount of tax credits.”

    Good luck as you begin to think about this year’s health insurance enrollment!

  • Obamacare: Messing With Your Subsidies

    Obamacare has hit another snag in its wobbly existence. “If you like your plan, you can keep it” rings false again, but now the victims are not those who were already perfectly happy with what they had. Now, the victims of Obamacare are the poorer recipients who qualified for taxpayer subsidies to take the edge off of high premiums.

    In 2015, the rules for Obamacare’s taxpayer-funded subsidies will change, and out the window will go the plans that used those subsidies. Connecticut, Indiana, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington Obamacare customers will all have their two lowest premium silver plans change and will see the subsidy calculation change for the worse.

    Those who are using the Obamacare subsidies will have to change plans to avoid paying the high premiums, because the premiums just keep climbing.

    “Those receiving federal premium subsidies may need to switch plans in 2015 to avoid paying more than the limits established by the ACA, and the impact will be more profound for lower-income consumers,” said Caroline Pearson, Avalere Health’s vice president.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsnBOommc1Q

    Now, we face the joy of the website.

    For, not only does the website have to handle new Obamacare sign-ups, it has to deal with all of the customers who received subsidies in these states (which means the majority) that now need to scramble to find a new plan.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRKFwj8RHcM

    The Obama administration has not even finished building the back end portions of the federal Obamacare website, but hopes to have it up and running with all the updates soon.

    The Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday that they would offer automatic re-enrollment for those on subsidies who want to stick with their current plan, but they warned that a double-check should be made on the price of that Obamacare plan for 2015.

    Hopefully the changes won’t have too much of a negative effect on those who are already struggling to keep up with rising costs.

    Image via YouTube

  • Kathleen Sebelius Resigns As HHS Secretary; Budget Secretary To Take Her Place

    White house officials announced the resignation of Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who stepped down following the six-month open enrollment period of Obamacare.

    Last Sunday, Sebelius denied rumors that she was pressured to leave her post because of issues with the Affordable Care Act’s implementation. In a ceremony held at the White House Rose Garden on Friday, President Barack Obama nominated Office of Management and Budget director Sylvia Mathews Burwell as Sebelius’ successor.

    In an interview on NBC’s TV news program Meet the Press, Sebelius said that she and President Obama started discussing the health care law after the first year, suggesting that he should begin looking for her replacement once the first chapter of the implementation was finished.

    Sebelius also said she offered her resignation to President Obama in March, although he did not accept it until after the enrollment deadline passed this past week. Calling it a “logical time to leave”, Sebelius said that she made it clear to the President that staying on was not an option.

    The 65-year-old former Governor of Kansas was widely criticized for the Obamacare website’s many glitches and flaws. However, the total number of Obamacare enrollees went over 7 million despite the rollout’s challenges – an achievement that earned the praise of Democrats. On the other hand, Republicans have not been as forgiving to Sebelius and the health care law.

    On Sunday, they vowed to continue fighting Obamacare even as it shifts under Burwell’s leadership. Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee’s 7th district appeared on CBS’ Face the Nation in which she stated that the government can expect a continued effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare.

    Sebelius successor, Burwell, is not a newbie to the White House – she served under former President Bill Clinton as his deputy chief of staff, as well as the staff director of the National Economic Council.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Obamacare Sees Surge In Sign-Ups On Eve Of Deadline; Republicans Question Transparency

    With only a day to go before the first batch of signups closes, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—more popularly known as “Obamacare”—has yet to reach its target of 7 million registrants. President Obama’s trademark health care legislation has faced controversy since its inception, and it looks like the Republicans’ steady opposition is taking its toll.

    Obamacare’s primary purpose was to make health insurance more affordable and accessible to the public without sacrificing the quality of claimable benefits. It aimed to minimize the number of uninsured Americans through increasing the coverage of public and private insurance and lowering insurance costs. It imposes certain requirements on insurance companies, such as covering new applicants with the same rates regardless of pre-existing conditions or sex, in exchange for incentives. Insurers such as WellPoint and CoOpportunity Health are, for the most part, satisfied with the way the program is running.

    The program met a disastrous launch in October of last year, with many of the state-hosted sites for signup experiencing glitches. This resulted in lost application data, crashes, and delays. Interventions performed for weeks after the launch were able to get some of the sites running smoothly; others could not be fully recovered. Since then, the program has attracted over 6 million participants, many of whom are late applicants. Over a million signed up through the federal site just this weekend. White House Senior Advisor David Plouffe claims the enrollees actually numbered around 10 million, taking into account direct signups with private insurance companies, Medicaid, and children’s health care.

    Republicans question the transparency in the handling of the program. They argue that because Obamacare aims to reduce the uninsured, the administration should show the extent to which this goal is being achieved. A McKinsey & Co. survey reports that 27% of respondents participating in Obamacare were previously uninsured. Supporters of the law take this as a positive sign. Still, Republicans and Democrats alike have come up with various proposals to improve the law. Many Republicans call for its complete repeal, with some like Senator Barrasso calling it unfixable.

    The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that 14 million Americans will sign up for insurance in 2014 through private insurance agencies or the Medicaid expansion. Obamacare is expected to be in full swing in 2018, when the CBO predicts the program will have enrollees numbering 25 million through private insurance, and 12 million through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

    Does The Obamacare Deadline Mean Anything?

    Image via YouTube

  • Affordable Care Act Deadline Nears, Obama Urges People to Enroll

    President Obama marked four years on Sunday since he signed the Affordable Care Act into law on March 23, 2010, and urged people to enroll in the program as the March 31 deadline approaches.

    The president celebrated the law’s anniversary and urged people to sign up for coverage, which has come to be more commonly referred to as Obamacare, as the deadline to enroll approaches later this month. Individuals who are not enrolled in a health care program after March 31 will be fined.

    President Obama said in a statement:

    “Since I signed the Affordable Care Act into law, the share of Americans with insurance is up, and the growth of health care costs is down, to its slowest rate in fifty years – two of the most promising developments for our middle class and our fiscal future in a long time.”

    Obama admitted the controversial program has been difficult to sell, even as the deadline approaches. In his statement, he promised to spend the next year with his administration making improvements.

    “This is what’s at stake any time anyone, out of some outdated obsession, pledges to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act.  And that’s why my administration will spend the fifth year of this law and beyond working to implement and improve on it,” said Obama.

    Obama concluded by encouraging people to enroll.

    “If you’re an American who wants to get covered – or if you know someone who should – it’s now last call for 2014.  March 31st is the deadline to get covered this year,” Obama said.

    The HealthCare.gov website had a hard time getting up and running, but the Department of Health and Human Services said a wave of people has enrolled in the last week, and enrollment recently passed the 5 million mark.

    Officials have scaled back their original estimate of seven million enrolled to six million. According to recent enrollment figures released March 17, more than one million sign-ups were still necessary to reach the reduced goal by March 31.

    There is a concern that there needs to be an increase in the number of customers ages 18-34 enrolled in the program, and the White House has in recent weeks been appealing to younger people through various media outlets. During the past month, Obama urged daytime viewers to sign up for coverage during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show from the White House.  The President also sat down in the Diplomatic Reception Room for separate interviews with comedian Zach Galifianakis and a health care expert from Web M.D., and dialed in to Rickey Smiley’s hip hop radio show to appeal to listeners.

    From January until the end of March, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the HealthCare.gov site and administers the Affordable Care Act, will have spent $52 million on paid media, officials said.

    You can read Obama’s statement on the fourth anniversary of the Affordable Health Act here.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Obamacare’s Glitch Disqualifies Americans From Health Care

    Obamacare’s Glitch Disqualifies Americans From Health Care

    The main Obamacare website, where Americans can apply for healthcare, has an ongoing glitch that may be telling users that they are not qualified for subsidies when they really are. This glitch has been discovered to be running for nearly six months now.

    The Healthcare.gov website has a subsidy calculator where users can estimate how much financial assistance they qualify for before applying for Obamacare. The estimate is unofficial, but many eligible Americans might be discouraged to sign up for health care coverage because of its high costs.

    The glitch was discovered by the Philadelphia Inquirer while typing in hypothetical incomes. Before this, none of the officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) noticed the glitch on the Obamacare website.

    The subsidy calculator is using 2014 poverty guidelines when the health care law is using 2013 guidelines. The Affordable Care Act is still using last year’s mandate because sign-ups began in 2013. The 2014 guidelines are 1.5 percent higher, which may add thousands of dollars in coverage costs.

    CMS counters that it made a small difference, and that they are correcting the issue.

    This glitch affects those with incomes that barely reach the poverty line. Under the law, families whose income is 100 to 400 percent of the federal poverty level are qualified to receive subsidies.

    There is no word on how many people have been affected, but it is possible that many families did not continue applying for Obamacare after receiving expensive and inaccurate results.

    However, applicants can still continue and see if they are actually qualified. According to CMS spokesperson Richard Olague, users can get an accurate calculation of their subsidy if they complete their healthcare application.

    The Healthcare.gov website is the latest of government websites that have suffered several glitches since they were launched last year.

    Enrollment for coverage ends March 31.

    This was not the first glitch

    Image via YouTube

  • Jonah Hill’s Mom Wants You to Sign Up for Obamacare

    The open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act is dwindling, as the March 31st deadline is fast approaching. Let’s call this part two of the White House’s celebrity-oriented campaign to get people to sign up in the next two weeks.

    The White House’s new hopefully viral video promoting Obamacare comes with its own hashtag: #yourmomcares. It features the mothers of some famous actors and musicians urging Americans to sign up for health care, you know, for your mommas’ sanity.

    “Trust me, us moms put up with a lot,” says Sharon Feldstein in the video. “But one thing we should never have to put up with is our kid not having healthcare.”

    Feldstein is joined by the mothers of Adam Levine, Alicia Keys, and Jennifer Lopez–as well as by Michelle Obama to urge people to get covered.

    “Get covered at healthcare.gov. Moms put up with a lot, but there’s nothing worse than feeling their child isn’t protected. Go to healthcare.gov and get covered before enrollment ends on March 31. Do it for your mom,” says the Your Mom Cares initiative.

    It’s unlikely that this video will further the White House’s goals as efficiently as the last one the President participated in. Earlier this week, Obama appeared on an episode of ‘Between Two Ferns,’ Zach Galifianakis’ long-running online comedy show. That appearance on the Funny or Die-produced webseries caused a giant spike in traffic at healthcare.gov.

    According to the White House, 4.2 million people have enrolled via the marketplace in the last five months. The administration not only hopes, but needs that number to rise sharply in the next two weeks.

    Image via Your Mom Cares, YouTube

  • Obama’s ‘Between Two Ferns’ Tactic Leads to Healthcare.gov Traffic Spike

    Let’s just assume that President Obama had reasons to sit down with Zach Galifianakis on “Between Two Ferns” other than showing the country that he could expertly pull off a fat joke.

    Of course, Obama’s move to star in one of the internet’s longest-running and funniest quasi anti-comedy bits had everything to do with pushing signups for the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges as the signup period dwindles. Americans now have until March 31st to purchase coverage. It’s crunch time, and the White House made a calculated decision to reach out to the younger crowd by throwing them an (admittedly pretty funny) elevated sales pitch.

    And it looks like it paid off–if the White House’s measure of success was simply getting people to the healthcare.gov site.

    Time will tell if a sudden boost in signups can be directly attributed to the Funny or Die video, but in terms of a sheer traffic driver, it looks as though the move payed off to the tune of a 40% spike in healthcare.gov visits.

    The video has seen over 12 million views on the Funny or Die site alone, and that figure doesn’t include the countless views the video saw on YouTube before Funny or Die removed it.

    According to Google data, “healthcare.gov” has seen a spike in searches over the past 24 hours and “Between Two Ferns” is one of the hottest search trends since Tuesday morning.

    “I can assure you that the Funny or Die video will be one of the reasons we get young Americans to HealthCare.gov–one of the reasons we get young Americans to enroll in health insurance programs, but not the only one,” said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

    Pageviews aren’t signups, but it’s clear that Obama got people curious when he made mentions of the open enrollment period–you know, between all the Hangover 3 jokes.

    Images via YouTube, reddit

  • HealthCare.gov – More Problems Ahead?

    HealthCare.gov – More Problems Ahead?

    With the shaky start-up of the new Affordable Care Act website, HealthCare.gov and many other problems this site has encountered since its inception, the Obama administration decided a different website developer/contractor was needed to get the site running properly.

    The problem though is that the administration is relying on the consulting firm Accenture to lead the continued construction and maintenance of HealthCare.gov, and they have a history of questionable ethical practices as well as performance problems.

    For example, last year Accenture was hired by the state of North Carolina to streamline their computer program for its food stamp program. The program worked so poorly, however, that it led to a backlog of food stamp distribution to NC’s needy.

    And this is just one example, which was detailed in a Washington Post report.

    Regardless of their sketchy past, the Obama administration granted Accenture a contract worth approximately $90 million to fix the problematic Affordable Care website.

    The University of Michigan is seeing students and faculty members protesting the school’s use of Accenture to help cut costs, after a report by a committee of alumni and graduate students that said the firm has “a disturbing pattern of problematic past performance.”

    The U.S. Postal Service Inspector General’s Office wrote recently, that Accenture had “demonstrated an absence of business ethics” and stated that the agency should consider terminating the firm’s more than $200 million in contracts.

    Accenture has agreed to pay the United States $63.675 million to resolve a whistleblower lawsuit, the Justice Department announced recently. The lawsuit alleges that Accenture was involved in false claims for payment under many contracts with agencies of the United States for information technology services.

    “Kickbacks and bid rigging undermine the integrity of the federal procurement process,” said Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “At a time when we’re looking for ways to reduce our public spending, it is especially important to ensure that government contractors play by the rules and don’t waste precious taxpayer dollars.”

    Accenture will be in charge of not only improving the current site, but also preparing it for open enrollment next fall.

    “We are honored to be part of the team of technology and healthcare companies and government professionals helping the federal government meet the healthcare coverage needs of its citizens,” said David Moskovitz, the chief executive of Accenture’s federal services. “Accenture will bring deep healthcare industry insight as well as proven experience building large-scale, public-facing websites to continue improving HealthCare.gov.”

    One can only hope this information does not lead to further HealthCare.gov problems, and that the previous and present problems are remedied.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Obamacare Enrollment Hit 2.2 Million in December

    Obamacare Enrollment Hit 2.2 Million in December

    Despite the difficult and broken start the Healthcare.gov website got off to in October, the Affordable Care Act (AKA “Obamacare“) is now quickly becoming effective, providing millions of Americans with access to health insurance.

    The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services today reported Affordable Care Act’s latest numbers, boasting that nearly 2.2 million people have signed up for health insurance under the program as of December 28, 2013. With the Healthcare.gov site’s technical problems largely resolved by December, that month accounted for a full 1.8 million of those new sign-ups, through the federal website and individual state-sponsored sites.

    “Americans are finding quality affordable coverage in the marketplace, and best of all, because coverage began on New Year’s Day, the promise and hope of the Affordable Care Act is now a reality,” said Kathleen Sebelius, secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Our outreach efforts have ramped up, so whether it’s through public service announcements, events, our champions or other means, we are doing all we can to find, inform and enroll those who can benefit from the Marketplace. There is still plenty of time for you and your family to sign up in a private plan of your choice, so visit HealthCare.gov to learn more and sign up now.”

    Along with the enrollment information, the HHS today provided some of the first demographic information for the Affordable Care Act. Around 30% of those who have signed up for health insurance via the federal or a state website have been age 34 or younger and nearly one quarter (24%) of those 2.2 million people are between the age of 18 and 24. A large majority of those signed up through the program (79%) are receiving some type of financial assistance for their healthcare insurance.

    Despite a big December for the program, Obamacare’s slow ramp-up has left many Americans with a negative perception of the healthcare reform law. A Gallup poll released last week showed that 48% of U.S. adults believe the Affordable Care Act will make eventually make U.S. healthcare worse, while a majority (54%) say that they generally disapprove of the legislation.

  • Uninsured Americans Still Having Negative Experiences With Healthcare Website

    If it hadn’t been for the government shutdown that coincided with the launch of the Healthcare.gov website, the site’s messy rollout would have been the largest political story of 2013. Americans flooded the site in its first weeks of availability only to see technical glitches if they could even access it at all.

    Eventually the Obama administration was able to get a handle on the technical issues, declaring that the site should be fully-functioning by December. Though the website has improved and over one million Americans have signed up for health coverage through the site, it seems that those needing the site most are still struggling against it.

    A new Gallup poll out today shows that uninsured Americans are still having mostly negative interactions with the Healthcare.gov website. Around 450 uninsured Americans who visited the site were surveyed in December by Gallup, with 59% saying their experience using the website was either negative or very negative. Only 39% of those same uninsured Americans were able to call their experience with the website positive or very positive.

    Though these numbers suggest that the Healthcare.gov website is still giving Americans trouble, experiences with the site have improved since the website launched. The 59% of uninsured who had negative experiences with the site is a marginal improvement from the 63% who had overall negative experiences with the site in October and November.

    According to Gallup, just over one-quarter of uninsured Americans have now visited the Healthcare.gov website. That would leave around half of uninsured Americans still needing to visit the site or face the fines that the last quarter of uninsured Americans say they intend to pay rather than get health insurance.

  • Obamacare Disapproval Drops as Website Improves

    Obamacare Disapproval Drops as Website Improves

    House Republicans’ government shutdown in October did no favors for a congress that hit new lows in approval this year. However, the botched rollout of the Healthcare.gov website also shifted Americans’ opinions against the very law that Republicans were protesting against.

    Now that the Healthcare.gov website is finally moving toward functionality it appears Americans are softening their opinions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, colloquially known as “Obamacare“).

    A new Gallup poll conducted this week shows that disapproval for the ACA is dropping at a consistent rate. From the high of 55% of Americans who said they generally disapprove of the Affordable Care Act in November, the rate of disapproval for the legislation has now dropped to the slim majority of 51%. Approval for the ACA, which dropped to 40% November, has not rebounded with only 41% of Americans this week saying they generally approve of the legislation.

    Perhaps surprisingly, approval of the ACA is is up among both Democrats and Republicans since late November. Democrat approval for the law has begun rising after the October dip and now sits at 75%. Republican approval ticked up only slightly to 10%. Independent approval for the ACA, on the other hand, saw a significant drop to just 31% from the steady 38% to 39% it had been throughout November.

    With less than a majority of Americans actually approving of the ACA, Gallup is predicting that the healthcare legislation will once again be a major campaign focus for candidates in next year’s midterm elections. However, with a bi-partisan budget now looking like a real possibility it seems that Americans will not have to deal with another government shutdown over the issue.

  • Healthcare.gov, Getting Healthier in December

    Healthcare.gov, Getting Healthier in December

    “We do know that things are not perfect with the site. We will continue to make improvements and upgrades.”

    Julie Bataille, Director of CMS’ Office of Communications, is one of many working to make the government’s online health exchange successful. “The bottom line is we have fixed many of the bugs associated with the forms, known as 834 forms,” she said. “Insurance companies have told CMS that the forms are working correctly in their systems.”

    According to The Washington Post, the Obama administration released a report this weekend that shows improvement in the consumer experience. System response time has fallen from eight seconds to less than one second. More than 400 of the 600 fixes on the administration’s list of repairs have been made. The administration believes HealthCare.gov can now handle 50,000 simultaneous users. The site, which was down over half of the time in early November, is now working nearly 95 percent of the time.

    In Utah, online assisters say three of every four people successfully signed up for health coverage within an hour of logging in. In North Dakota, an overseeing state official said he had noticed improvements in the site, as did others helping people sign up in parts of Alabama and Wisconsin.

    Other states, however, have not yet noticed these improvements.

    “We had very high hopes for today, but those hopes were very much quashed,” said Amanda Crowell, director of revenue cycle for UnityPoint Health-Trinity, which has four hospitals in Illinois and Iowa.

    Staff members at an organization in South Florida have also have said that they have seen no major improvements from Healthcare.gov.

    But federal health officials understand that the website is still a work in progress and that some participants are successful in obtaining their heath care information.

    On Monday, Starla Redmon, 58, of Paris, Ill., was able to successfully get into a health plan with help from an enrollment counselor in less than an hour. She was surprised the website worked so well after hearing many reports about its problems.

    “Everything she typed in, it went through,” said Redmon, who juggles two part-time jobs and has been uninsured for four years. She chose a bronze plan and will pay about $75 a month after a tax credit. “It was the cheapest plan I could go with.”

    HealthCare.gov is quickly improving. In other words, it will be fixed. For most people, it is fixed now, or will be fixed quite soon.

    Undeniably, change hurts, particularly in health-care insurance. This may hurt the Democrats in 2014. But Obamacare will create millions, and perhaps tens of millions, of winners who are getting insurance or protection through the law.

    On Monday, according to USA Today, New York statistics showed that 91,000 people had enrolled for health insurance, about 50,000 had bought a qualified plan, and an additional 41,000 had qualified for Medicaid.

    “We certainly expect enrollment to increase because of the fixes [to the website],” Bataille said.

    The site is supposed to be able to accommodate about 800,000 visitors each day, based on an eight-hour day.

    Image via: Wikimedia Commons

  • Obamacare Delayed – 2015 Open Enrollment To Be Delayed One Month

    Friday, the Obama Administration announced an important change in the Affordable Care Act’s open enrollment period.

    Previously, the 2015 enrollment period was scheduled to begin Oct. 15, 2014 and end Dec. 7, however, now it will now begin Nov. 15, 2014, and end Jan. 15, 2015. One month later.

    The Washington Post has to say, “The new change will, notably, push the open enrollment period until after the 2014 election, which will be held Nov. 4 — a circumstance that has Republicans crying foul”

    Is there a political agenda here? November 15th is right after the 2014 elections, 11 days after.

    According to the Department of Health and Human Services, one extension gives consumers eight extra days, to Dec. 23, to enroll in Obamacare plans that kick in Jan. 1, and gives them until Dec. 31 to actually start paying for those plans.”

    Consumers fear that changes might occur after the elections, as Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for industry lobbying group American’s Health Insurance Plans, said, “It makes it more challenging to process enrollments in time for coverage to begin on January 1.”

    The reason for the second extension, according to Zirkelbach, “giving health plans more time to submit premium rates for next year will enable them to better assess who is covered in their plans and help ensure those rates more accurately reflect the population covered.”

    So, the delay might be a good thing after all, and the promise made by the software wizard, Jeff Zients, promises that the site is being worked on around the clock to ensure HealthCare.gov is up and running without a hitch, by the new December 23rd deadline.

    And, Zients said, “by the Nov. 30 deadline, the fixes will allow HealthCare.gov to handle at least 800,000 visitors each day, and 50,000 visitors at any one time.”

    Image, Wiki Commons

  • Health Exchange Sites Receiving Poor Reviews From Uninsured

    Though only 21% of uninsured Americans have visited new healthcare exchange websites, a vast majority of them are having negative experiences with them. This is according to a new Gallup poll that shows nearly two-thirds (63%) of uninsured Americans who have visited healthcare exchange sites have had a negative experience with them.

    The poll surveyed over 1,500 uninsured Americans about their experiences with the new healthcare.gov website and other state healthcare exchange websites. A large majority of them rated their experience with such websites as negative, with 33% stating their experience was “negative” and a further 30% going so far as to say their experience was “very negative.”

    Only 34% of those surveyed had had a positive experience with a healthcare exchange website, with only 5% of respondents saying they had a “very positive” experience.

    It is worth noting that Gallup did not survey enough uninsured Americans to separate their feelings on state and federal healthcare exchanges separately. It has been reported that while the federal healthcare.gov website has been plagued with technical glitches, other websites in states such as Kentucky and Arkansas have functioned as intended.

    That said, confusion over the new system means that many uninsured Americans don’t even know whether they used the federal site or a state exchange. Over two-thirds (36%) of those surveyed stated they were “unsure” whether they had visited (or at least tried to visit) a state or federal healthcare exchange website. Only 28% surveyed were sure they had visited the federal site, with a further 14% having only visited a state exchange. Another 18% stated that they had visited both a federal and a state healthcare exchange website.

    With the confusion and frustration evident in these poll results, it is clear that the healthcare.gov rollout has been a bit of a fiasco. President Obama has promised that the federal website will be fixed, but with congress now grumbling about significant changes to the Affordable Care Act, time is running out for the current rollout plan.

  • HealthCare.gov Better, But Initial Problems Persist

    The Affordable Health Care Act website at HealthCare.gov has been the talk of the town, with endless chatter of frustration, anger and downright shock at the failure of an operating website for the public to take advantage of the new health care act. One in five Americans who wanted to sign up for heath insurance found it nearly impossible. The website was simply not functioning, freezing or completely malfunctioning since inception in October.

    As of Friday, though, CNN reports that “the front end of HealthCare.gov is working better, but many problems identified in the days after its launch persist, according to a team of Web engineers.”

    The problem lies in governmental websites being outdated, as explained by Obama in his “Fumbled” speech. If you’ve ever tried to navigate Social Security or any other government site, you’d agree. And that is the biggest hurdle with HealthCare.gov, out dated applications, badly written code, incorrect testing codes and more. The website that was supposed to support this brand new health care system, designed to help millions of people get health insurance, has failed miserably.

    There were alternatives though, such as calling in to get insurance quotes, however with the website down, the wait time was extremely long, many reporting 3-5 hours to complete this daunting task, and some even longer.

    Jeff Zients, the management expert brought in by the White House to oversee the site’s repair, repeated the administration’s assurances that “most users” will be able to navigate from start to enrollment by the end of the month.

    The point is that ObamaCare is a good program and will enable many uninsured Americans to have health insurance at an affordable cost. Not only that, people with preexisting conditions cannot be turned away. It is going to help so many millions of people that perhaps it is worth the wait?

    Or could this just be blown out of proportion so that certain “other party” representatives can claim an Obama fail? After all, they hated the idea from the get go. But, remember, having a website fail is not a life or death situation, and by the looks of things, the opposition just seems to have finally grabbed onto something they can turn into a national case.

    The White House representatives stated that it is functioning now, and within a month it should be fully operational. That should be good enough for Americans who have been paying high health insurance rates and have been turned down for preexisting conditions. Its a blessing in disguise, but may take a little patience.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • HealthCare.gov Aims to Sign Up 4 of 5 Americans

    The Washington Post reported today that the Affordable Care Act’s primary website, HealthCare.gov, will be capable of getting 80 percent of Americans on an insurance plan, but that still leaves 20 percent who will remain without insurance.

    According to the best-case scenario from the Obama administration, those 20 percent will be unable to purchase insurance online because of either their personal lives’ complexity or the site’s ineptitude; that conclusion is based on an internal target that has not been made public by the Obama administration.

    Whether the government succeeds in getting 80 percent of Americans enrolled is a central factor of President Barack Obama’s healthcare effort. Although administration officials acknowledged that they had no concrete definition for a successfully functioning Obamacare site, creating one wouldn’t have made any sense until they had a site to define; I.E., HealthCare.gov.

    Julie Bataille, communications director for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said “We are very focused on measuring performance of the site now and moving forward and making sure we have ways to demonstrate progress… [HealthCare.gov will] work smoothly for the vast majority of users [by the end of November].”

    The “vast majority” quote has become a repeated mantra for the administration, with little exposition about what it could mean. It was coined by former White House management official Jeffrey Zients, who was assigned to oversee the repair of HealthCare.gov.

    CNN notes Zients speaking with reporters on Friday about the site’s functioning: “As we prioritize fixes on HealthCare.gov, we focus on system performance and functionality, things like site stability, speed and usability that make a real difference to the consumer,” he said. “But to be clear as you would experience with any major new site, new bugs and other glitches will surface in December and beyond and as they surface we will fix them.”

    Additionally, two of the engineers who worked on analyzing HealthCare.gov said the site looks “a lot cleaner.” Media Temple president and COO Russ Reeder told CNN that “You can tell from the website that there are people working it and making changes. And those changes are good. [But] there are still many changes they can still make.”

    [Image via HealthCare.gov]

  • Obama Administration: Over 106,000 Enroll Under ACA

    The Obama administration announced today that the enrollment for insurance under his new health care reform law hit 106,185 in October, according to Reuters. The administration admitted that the numbers would be low because of the endless list of troubles the website had after it’s initial roll-out October 1st.

    The numbers include 26,794 people who were able to log on and sign up for private health insurance plans through the bug-riddled, sketchy federal “marketplace” that serves 36 states. Included also, are 396,261 people who were determined to be eligible for the government’s Medicaid program or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (C.H.I.P.) for the underprivileged, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

    Even though initial numbers were admittedly low due to technical issues with HealthCare.gov, the figures still stress how far the administration has to go in order for the Affordable Care Act to be financially viable.

    They had better get those numbers up, because Republicans are on the hunt for Obamacare alternatives that can be heralded in the elections. In his speech at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual fall banquet on Saturday the 9th, Mike Lee had some ideas to think about before the next election season, such as “market-based alternatives” that could replace Obamacare should the Republicans hope to have success at the polls in 2014.

    Technical issues haven’t been the only thing plaguing Obamacare. Just last week, President Obama was forced to apologize to the many Americans who began receiving cancellation notices from their insurance companies, after having promised, during the nauseating amount of stumping he did for his Affordable Care Act, that if you like your insurance, you would be able to keep it.

    He admitted that he failed to do enough to ensure that the law did not allow cancellation of insurance policies that citizens like because they don’t meet his requirements. “But obviously, we didn’t do a good enough job in terms of how we crafted the law,” Obama said. “And, you know, that’s something that I regret. That’s something that we’re going to do everything we can to get fixed.”

    Time will tell.

    Image via wikimedia commons

  • Obama Addresses Irritation of Healthcare Site Issues

    The snags in Obama’s Affordable Care Act – which began when users were unable to even browse the new healthcare Web site – were publicly addressed by the President on Monday in Washington.

    Spurned by the rising dissatisfaction with the entire plan because of the site’s technical issues, the President and Administration officials held a 25-minute briefing in the Rose Garden on the White House lawn at which Obama admitted the site’s problems are “inexcusable.”

    “Nobody is more frustrated than I am,” Obama said of the inaccessibility of healthcare.gov; thousands of Americans trying to either set up new, or access current, accounts have been unable to do so since its live debut on October 1.

    For the most part, though, the President defended the A.C.A. itself to the crowd, reiterating, “We did not wage this long and contentious battle just around a Web site. That’s not what this was about.”

    The day before the Rose Garden address, White House Cmmunications Director Jennifer Palmieri gave similar sentiments, saying, “There’s great demand for the affordable healthcare coverage made available by the A.C.A. The challenge for all of us – the state and federal governments and contractors alike – is to make sure the American people can access it simply. We won’t rest until they can.”

    According to sources working on a solution to the site’s ‘bugs,’ however, Palmieri’s “all of us” may not be resting any time soon – many say the site may not work properly until after the December 15 due date for sign-ups needing coverage beginning in January. One person even went so far as to iterate that so much work may be needed for repairs that the rewriting of millions of software code lines may be required.

    The reason behind the site’s many failures, according to some experts, is that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services did not realize, nor have the experience needed, to truly grasp the difficulty of – and then implement – the building and maintaining of such an extensive network, although many politicians are not accepting that excuse.

    On “Fox News Sunday” Senator Marco Rubio (Florida, Republican) said, “In the 21st century, setting up a Web site where people can go on and buy something is not that complicated.”

    There is good news for the many individuals anxiously awaiting the chance to sign up for the Act-mandated healthcare through the Web site, however. Headway is reportedly being made on site repairs, as contractor-administration tensions have lessened and the two groups are discussing where to go from here; a Congressional hearing set for Thursday has both factions hoping for an agreement and plan by then.

    Until the online exchange is working properly, Obama reinforced that individuals needing to sign-up or apply can do so by mail or phone; you can reach assistance by telephone at (800) 318-2596.

    Image courtesy @WhiteHouse via Twitter.