WASHINGTON—Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a Senate panel on Nov. 6 that healthcare.gov needs hundreds of repairs. She remained stoic under harsh questions.
Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, who faces a tea party-backed challenger in 2014, said, “You have said the American people should hold you accountable, which is why today I repeat my request for you to resign.” Sebelius was formerly the governor of Kansas.
Sebelius said the website has improved since its launch Oct. 1.
Echoing testimony delivered Monday by another administration official to a different committee, she said the website is now able to process nearly 17,000 registrations an hour, with almost no errors. The administration has promised all repairs will be complete by the end of November.
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden also met privately Wednesday with Senate Democrats facing re-election next year to discuss the problem-plagued health care rollout that could affect their races. Obama later flew to Texas to promote the Affordable Care Act and raise money for Democrats.
Website Fixes
The White House confirmed that the meeting was to describe fixes that are being made to the website for Americans to sign up for insurance under his signature health care law. Jeff Zients, the president’s troubleshooter for the website, gave a detailed technical presentation about the repairs.
The website is important because it was meant to be an easy avenue for young, healthy, uninsured people to find affordable health insurance coverage. Though it is possible to enroll with a paper application, online enrollment should be faster and more convenient. That has been far from the case in the first weeks of open enrollment, which started Oct. 1 and ends March 31, 2014. People who have a change, such as job loss, marriage, or divorce, can enroll outside the open enrollment period.
As with any insurance, the program’s financial viability relies on a model of shared risk, where a mix of healthy and sick people have insurance. If only the highly motivated, uninsured, sick people brave the frustrating website to buy health insurance, it could place a burden on insurance providers. Fixing the website is important for practical as well as political reasons.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that 7 million currently uninsured people will get coverage through the federal or state insurance exchanges, while 9 million will gain insurance from the Medicaid expansion, which has the participation of about half the states. According to the nonpartisan Kaiser Foundation, reaching 7 million signups has become the measure of the success or failure of “Obamacare” in its first year.
Yes or No
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) peppered Sebelius with questions about Obama’s oft-stated pledge that anyone who likes their coverage will be able to keep it.
Asked if that was an accurate statement, Sebelius declined Cornyn’s request for a yes or no answer.
Insurers are sending cancellation notices to customers whose current policies lack enough coverage to meet the law’s more demanding standards—at least 3.5 million Americans, according to an Associated Press survey of states.
According to Angie Holan, editor of Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact, few people face this situation, but their stories are compelling.
Only 5 percent of Americans buy individual insurance. Of those, a minority purchased bare-bones plans that won’t be allowed in 2014—some so bare-bones that a hospital stay is not covered. Some of the cheapest plans available in 2014 have limited coverage, but they also have a cap on out-of-pocket expenses.
Holan said most of those get a letter from their insurance company that says “We’re ending your plan, hope you pick another, we’ll get you covered.”
The cancellations issue, like the website problems, may not affect the long-term success or failure of the legislation. The purpose of the law is to reduce the number of uninsured people. Yet some will indeed be losers with the new law.
Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s statement that “everyone will get more and pay less with the Affordable Care Act” was rated “False,” by PolitiFact, according to Holan.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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