The Obama administration has made a big show of its repairs to the broken Healthcare.gov website, but serious problems remain. Problems that can’t be fixed with a press release or presidential speech.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Seeking to move past its website woes, the Obama administration is launching a two-pronged health care strategy this month aimed at avoiding enrollment snafus come January while also trying to refocus the public’s attention on broader benefits of the sweeping law.
President Barack Obama will focus on such benefits at a White House event Tuesday…
He’ll also take aim at Republicans, arguing that the GOP is trying to strip away those benefits without presenting an alternative.
That’s nice that Obama has a political plan in place, but with serious problems persisting at the website all the press conferences in the world won’t be a solution. Continues the AP (Peak emphasis):
Behind the scenes, the administration is furiously trying to rectify an unresolved issue with enrollment data that could become a significant headache after the first of the year. Insurers say much of the enrollment data they’re receiving is practically useless, meaning some consumers might not be able to get access to benefits on Jan. 1, the date their coverage is scheduled to take effect.
It gets worse, according to the New York Times (!):
Some insurers say they have been deluged with phone calls from people who believe they have signed up for a particular health plan, only to find that the company has no record of the enrollment. Others say information they received about new enrollees was inaccurate or incomplete, so they had to track down additional data — a laborious task that will not be feasible if data is missing for tens of thousands of consumers.
In still other cases, insurers said, they have not been told how much of a customer’s premium will be subsidized by the government, so they do not know how much to charge the policyholder.
As NRO’s Jim Geraghty aptly put it – you can’t spin website performance. It either works or it doesn’t.