Bad to Worse: Obamacare Website Slammed by Critics
Photo Credit: Getty ImagesBy Dan Mangan.
The federal Obamacare insurance marketplace is being pummeled by a damning series of new disclosures, expert criticism, Republican demands that the Health and Human Services chief resign and presidential displeasure as the tech-troubled website stumbles into its third week of operation.
And even as officials repeatedly claim there is plenty of time to fix the problems at HealthCare.gov, speculation has risen that the Obama administration could fall well short of its goal of enrolling 7 million people in new insurance plans by 2014 because of a crippling set of technical potholes the venture has encountered.
President Barack Obama is “not happy” with the problems, his spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday. Carney also said the president wants “accountability” from the federal workers overseeing the rollout of his signature health-reform law.
Obama also said HealthCare.gov, which is offering insurance plans to residents of 36 states, has “way more glitches than I think are acceptable.”
The federal and individual state health exchanges are a key part of Obamacare, offering what is supposed to be a menu of affordable insurance options to uninsured or underinsured people so that they can comply with a law that takes effect in 2014 requiring nearly all Americans to have health insurance or pay a tax penalty.
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Photo Credit: ReutersObamacare wins? See you in 2014
By David Nather.
Obamacare wins!
Now, let’s talk about that website.
President Barack Obama’s signature health care law is now turning into a 2014 election issue, rather than the disastrous defunding fight that led the government to close for three weeks. With the shutdown out of the way, the health care law’s problems will take center stage in a way that they didn’t while Republicans were stepping on their own message.
Obamacare was always going to be a major issue in the mid-term elections, since so many of its major pieces — the new health coverage, the online marketplaces where the coverage is available, the expansion of Medicaid, and the hated individual mandate — become real in January.
But now, Democrats will also have to talk about a federal health insurance website that barely anyone can use. Even White House spokesman Jay Carney was reduced to arguing Thursday that Obamacare isn’t just a website — after Obama has been saying it would be as easy as shopping for flat-screen TVs online.
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