President Barack Obama and the administration are now suffering a major problem on Obamacare, and it’s not just a matter of the website. Assertions about the plan have proven to be not totally correct and administration officials have avoided giving numbers on how many people actually enrolled. All of this has led to pollster how talking about an Obama credibility problem and cartoonists (see above) turning to newer imagery when it comes to Obama. And the latest bit of news u won’t help: only 248 people enrolled in the new health care program the first two days:
For 31 days now, the Obama administration has been telling us that Americans by the millions are visiting the new health insurance website, despite all its problems.
But no one in the administration has been willing to tell us how many policies have been purchased, and this may be the reason: CBS News has learned enrollments got off to an incredibly slow start.
Early enrollment figures are contained in notes from twice-a-day “war room” meetings convened within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services after the website failed on Oct. 1. They were turned over in response to a document request from the House Oversight Committee.
The website launched on a Tuesday. Publicly, the government said there were 4.7 million unique visits in the first 24 hours. But at a meeting Wednesday morning, the war room notes say “six enrollments have occurred so far.”
They were with BlueCross BlueShield North Carolina and Kansas City, CareSource and Healthcare Service Corporation.
By Wednesday afternoon, enrollments were up to “approximately 100.” By the end of Wednesday, the notes reflect “248 enrollments” nationwide.
The health care exchanges need to average 39,000 enrollees a day to meet the goal of seven million by March 1. The war room notes give a glimpse into some of the reasons customers had problems..
All of the news about the website and people getting notices that their “junk insurance” — a phrase that is indeed accurate if you look at these now outdated plans — plans have been cancelled have created a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s not just a p.r. nightmare for the administration, it’s that the administration is now looking incompetent in the implementation, marketing and explanation of Obamacare. People are panicking, Time notes:
Losing health insurance has long been a terrifying possibility for Americans who buy coverage on the open market. Historically, it meant taking on all kinds of risks, from forgoing needed medical care to financial ruin in the event of a serious illness or injury. Perhaps the greatest worry for those thrown off insurance policies was that they could not find good replacement coverage. According a study by the Commonwealth Fund, 57% of all Americans shopping for coverage in the individual insurance market in 2009 said they found it “very difficult or impossible” to find affordable insurance plans.
The fear of just such a dead end is no doubt part of what’s fueling a wave of panic among those opening their mailboxes this fall to find letters from insurers explaining that their plans are ending thanks to the Affordable Care Act. In news story after news story, consumers who purchased policies in the individual insurance market have expressed confusion as their lives are seemingly upended by Obamacare.
There have also been more than a few flashes of anger, mainly at the fact that President Obama promised repeatedly before the Affordable Care Act become law, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” This pledge has not turned out to be true. The law outlaws all but a small percentage of “grandfathered” individual insurance policies and requires carriers to instead offer coverage that’s more comprehensive.
When the very people a law is supposed to help become angry, something has gone wrong along the way. In hindsight, Obama made a promise he could not keep, even if he wanted to. Liking one’s insurance policy was never enough to ensure it would continue indefinitely. Insurers, especially in the individual market, cancel and change policies regularly year to year.
Part of what’s being lost in the tumult over the President’s dishonest statement to the American people is the context in which he uttered it.
If this is turning out to be a political disaster for the Democrats and Obama — a disaster still not beyond repair — it is not an unmitigated disaster since the GOP has cushioned some of the blow. The Washington Post:
The standoff over the budget and debt ceiling that culminated in a government shutdown amounted to a political disaster for Republicans. One of the main reasons why has nothing to do with what happened and everything to do with what didn’t.
A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Friday explains it. Forty-four percent of Americans say they paid very close attention to the fight over the short-term budget and the debt limit, while only half as many say the same thing about the glitches that have plagued the rollout of the health-care law’s online exchanges or marketplaces. Just 24 percent say they paid scant attention to the shutdown and debt showdown, compared to 46 percent who say the same thing about the troubled health-care rollout.
So, while Republicans were dominating the headlines with their fight against Obamacare in the budget debate, the real-world problems with the law were going overlooked by the public for much of last month. In short, Republicans couldn’t get out of their own way.
It’s especially stinging for Republicans because Obamacare was at the center of the House GOP strategy that led to the shutdown.
Republicans’ repeated refusal to pass a clean stopgap spending bill was rooted in an unyielding desire to use the budget debate to pick apart the health-care law. They talked over and over again about the negative impact of the law, and how it needed to be stopped.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s unsteady unveiling of HealthCare.gov during the same period gave rise to widely publicized causes for concern. But instead of allowing those issues to dominate the conversation, Republicans elbowed them to the side with their fight against the health-care law in Congress, which dealt the party a big-time political blow, even before taking into account the missed opportunity to spotlight the rollout woes. The party’s image plunged to an all-time low in the wake of the shutdown, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed.
The good news for Republicans bent on hammering Democrats over the law and pointing out its problems is the shutdown is over while the problems with the health-care law are not.
Until some conservatives push for another shutdown or play games with the debt default in coming months..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.