It is no surprise that the American people are not signing up for the President’s flawed health care exchanges to the extent the administration projected. Internal memos from the Health and Human Services Department estimated that nearly 500,000 people would sign up just this month.
Achieving that milestone looks highly unlikely at this point, as we have only seen a handful of people sign up for Obamacare throughout the country. The glitches which plague the HealthCare.gov website frustrating customers have also prevented us from knowing how many people have signed up for insurance on the website.
One estimate is that 36,000 people have applied throughout the 34 states with the highest numbers of uninsured individuals – nowhere near the administration’s projections. The state-run marketplaces have only recorded about 150,000 applications for health coverage, which is around a third of what the administration had hoped to see.
These numbers represent only the applicants for health care coverage - problems with the law could result in even less promising enrollment numbers.
When these few individuals have actually been able to apply for a health plan, many insurers are unable to determine who their potential new customers are. A set of computer defects separate from the HealthCare.gov problems have resulted in “confusing and duplicative” reports to insurance companies about their potential new enrollees.
Cigna, a major insurance carrier providing plans in Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas, sent a notice on October 9th instructing their insurance brokers to wait before signing up any new customers. The company does not yet trust the reliability of the exchange when calculating tax credits and has seen “multiple enrollments” of the same person coming through on the same day.
Although Cigna built its own online portal, that portal still must communicate with the federal exchange about potential subsidies, which is where the technical glitches have created issues.
It seems that nothing is working right. Americans are not signing up for Obamacare. When they do try to sign up, they reach a massively glitch-ridden website, frustrating them and preventing their ability to sign up for an exchange. For those few individuals who have been able to stick through the longer than expected process, the reports about them which are subsequently sent to insurance companies may often contain false information, be duplicative, or not include the information needed for those companies to adequately sign them up for an exchange.
These are just a few of the examples of why the American people deserve a better system. We should not require Americans to sign up for a failed system which they do not want or cannot physically acquire. If this was a private company, it would have already failed beyond repair. We must keep fighting for a better way to keep our country healthy.
Sources: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/17/the-white-house-wants-500000-obamacare-sign-ups-this-month-can-that-still-happen/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/federal-health-exchange-sending-confusing-enrollment-information-to-insurers/2013/10/11/a2f3ce2e-31ec-11e3-9c68-1cf643210300_story_2.html
