What a difference a year makes! With less fuss and very little media attention, the patched up healthcare.gov website was open for business this weekend. There were minor hiccups but enrollment went more smoothly for the federal website than last year. Some of the state websites still experienced problems though.
This weekend was ObamaCare open enrollment round two. Last year, the news cycle was consumed with headlines of the disastrous, botched, failed rollout of both the federal and state exchanges. Technology failed and everyone saw just how inept, the President, former Health and human Services Secretary (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius, and the Administration was at delivering his signature law.
The current HHS Secretary announced that on Saturday, when open enrollment began, 100,000 applications for ObamaCare were submitted and 500,000 people had logged on to the site. She doesn’t explain how many of those are new applicants versus those re-enrolling or those who were kicked off their plans for non-payment or not providing eligibility paperwork.
For healthcare.gov, some customers experienced trouble logging in. State websites were less successful. Washington, for example, had to take down its website to fix the functionality that calculated tax credits on Saturday. Other states faced other glitches.
Staff at USAToday tested the federal website and reported:
Open enrollment on the federal HealthCare.gov site kicked off relatively smoothly in many parts of the nation Saturday, although there were reports in some areas that consumers and brokers had problems logging into accounts.
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Across the U.S. state-run exchanges were having mixed success enrolling people. Washington state had to take its exchange offline to resolve a problem in which 2015 tax credit amounts were being incorrectly calculated for customers. In Colorado, plans that include cost-sharing subsidies weren't showing up for broker Louise Norris, who also got frequent error messages as she navigated the site.
At least she was able to enroll customers. Brokers at the Health Insurance Store of Louisiana in Baton Rouge weren't able to do that until early afternoon. Owner Will Chapman says none of the 10 agents or their clients could log into accounts until about 1 p.m. CT Saturday.
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Three USA TODAY staff members created accounts in Virginia on Saturday morning. One of the three was blocked from logging in, just as the agents in Louisiana experienced, After a five-minute wait on hold, a call center employee unlocked the account but warned it couldn't be logged into for another two hours.
After 2½ hours, attempts to log into the account again failed, so the password was reset again — to no avail.
After a USA TODAY reporter's third call to the call center after password changes failed to make log in possible, the woman answering the phone said she needed to send the case to "an advanced resolution specialist" who would call back "within five to seven business days."
The Administration is quiet about open enrollment. Last year, they held a “parade” to celebrate the grand opening of government-intervention in the healthcare industry and every single “float” fell apart as soon as the ribbon was cut to begin the show.
Like a freak show or carnival act, for months, their ineptitude was on full display. Instead of focusing on website functionality and systems, the Administration focused on public relations, advertising, and packaging. What good is wasting money on packaging when the gift inside the box is a big dud!
This year, while the functionality of the healthcare website(s) may have improved and open enrollment is off to a better start, ObamaCare remains a big dud.
Over the past year we’ve reported on the hardship ObamaCare has placed on part-time workers, whose hours have been cut to below 30. To avoid the employer mandate, and the rising costs healthcare premiums for young, healthy Americans. All Americans who don’t produce evidence of healthcare coverage will be taxed beginning this coming tax season. Life for those even with ObamaCare is still difficult and uncertain as they face narrow networks for doctors and healthcare providers, especially specialists.
More than half of Americans still disapprove of ObamaCare. A functioning website still won’t convince us of what we know: ObamaCare is a bad deal.
Comments by Jonathan Gruber, the architect of ObamaCare, reinforce the arrogance of big government advocates. They think we are “too stupid” to understand because some of us don’t hold the credentials that they do. They purposefully delivered complex plans in an opaque manner to mask the truth of the hardship that they planned to unleash. The philosophy that Washington and its “experts” know best is prevalent today and must be stopped for the sake of our healthcare industry, our economy, our nation, and our freedom.