Obamacare’s Error-Plagued Roll Out Continues

Four years after the President sold Obamacare by making one empty promise after another; the percentage of Americans who want the law repealed continues to rise. During the past 14 weeks, bureaucratic mismanagement, gross incompetence, and calculated deception have come to define the Administration’s disastrous Obamacare roll out, affecting Americans all over the country.

Rather than admit their law fails to work the way they promised, Washington Democrats are trying to change the conversation. Last month the Administration issued a dubious Obamacare progress report claiming HealthCare.gov now “runs smoothly for the vast majority of consumers.” President Obama and Washington Democrats took a quick victory lap – suggesting that the worst of HealthCare.gov’s problems are now fixed. The truth is that all the substantive problems reported before January 1st remain – they didn’t simply vanish. While the Administration desperately works to improve the website’s “front-end” consumer experience, the “back-end” administrative components (payment systems and enrollment application transfers) face serious obstacles.

The Administration’s spin leaves key questions unanswered.

• Why Does the White House Refuse to Provide Transparent Enrollment Data? On the eve of HealthCare.gov’s launch, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called seven million sign-ups by the end of March – including 2.7 million young, healthy adults – what “success looks like.” So what are Obamacare’s successful enrollment rates? According to HHS’ October report, only 106,185 people signed up for health insurance that month – 26,794 through HealthCare.gov and 79,291 through state-based exchanges. By the end of December, the White House claimed 2.1 million Americans enrolled using both the federal and state exchanges. The December figure is a red herring. It lacks key metrics like how many Americans fully enrolled in an exchange plan by paying their first month’s premium. Nor does it provide basic demographic information critical to determine if the current risk pool is balanced or not.

• How Many People Actually Paid Their First Month’s Premium? The Obama Administration counts people as “enrolled” in Obamacare if they successfully selected a health insurance plan. It is unclear, however, exactly how the Obama Administration defines “selected a plan.” Are these people who completed the application, chose a plan, and paid the first month’s premium? Or are these people who completed the application, chose a plan and put that plan in an online shopping cart, but have yet to pay the premium? Until people pay the first month’s health insurance premium, they do not have coverage. This is a very important number. Americans who do not pay will show up at their doctor’s office in January and discover their coverage isn’t valid. According to one report only half of the Obamacare enrollees – in a 17 state sample – paid their first month’s premium. Clearly the Administration’s suspect enrollment numbers could fall in the coming months.

• What if Americans Think They’re Covered, but They’re Not? For decades, insurers have used what’s called an “834” electronic form that tells the company’s computer system who a person is and what product they purchased. Since October, reports surfaced that the Obama Administration was sending health insurance companies both faulty and incomplete 834 enrollment application data. Jeffrey Zients identified 834 transmission rates as a key measure of the health care law’s success, and the Administration says it implemented an 834 system fix clearing 80 percent of the file transmission errors. But as one cyber-security firm CEO explained: “Eighty percent success rate is a really bad number … It’s as if you go on Amazon and you buy a product and you only receive it 80 percent of the time.” Apparently the insurance industry didn’t believe the news either. An industry spokesman countered that “health plans continue to experience significant problems with the 834 enrollment files.” Yet another report says insurers are identifying errors in approximately one out of every 20 recent applications. Additionally, between five to ten percent of the backlogged faulty Obamacare applications filled out and sent in before the December coverage deadline have yet to be reconciled.

The Administration is letting the American people find out if they are covered or not through trial and error. People who thought they signed up for insurance on the new exchanges are now going to the doctor and the local pharmacy only to discover they’re not in the computer system. The Obama Administration is relying on the good will of the nation’s health care providers to cover the health care law’s disastrous consequences. How long must the American people suffer while the White House looks like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight?

• Why Can’t HealthCare.gov Handle Simple “Life Event” Insurance Updates? A recent report says HealthCare.gov doesn’t give Americans a quick and easy way to update their health insurance coverage after common life changing events like a new baby, divorces, marriage, a death in the family, a new job, income changes, or an address change. Insurers told HHS the life changing event function was essential and needed to be in place before January 1. According to one expert, “It’s just another example of ‘We’ll fix that later.’” In what alternative universe can the President and Washington Democrats claim the Obamacare website is fixed? Clearly there are significant gaps in the HealthCare.gov system. If Obamacare can’t make basic changes to family insurance policies, what else can’t it handle?

House Republicans plan to vote on legislation this week compelling HHS to provide weekly HealthCare.gov status reports containing quantifiable metrics. H.R. 3362, the Exchange Information Disclosure Act requires HHS to release numbers such as: unique website visits; web chat logins; people who created an account; people who enrolled in a qualified health plan or Medicaid; people enrolled by zip code and the level of coverage purchased; people who paid their first month’s premium; the age of people who paid their first month’s premium; and the number of Medicaid enrollees due to the health care law’s expansion, versus the number of Medicaid enrollees who were otherwise eligible. Failure to disclose reliable data is a stunning admission that the most transparent Administration in history has something to hide and wants to avoid answering tough questions that will define the health care law’s success.

Health Care Headlines

The Federalist: Opinion, Senator Tom Coburn: “Obamacare Hasn’t Slowed The Growth of Health Care Costs – It’s The Economy, Stupid!” Obama administration advisors and supporters have been arguing that Obamacare and its grand designs to reshape health care have been a primary reason why health care costs have slowed. Yet, the facts and data the real world – rather than the world of unreality in which people can keep their doctors and plans if they like them until they can’t – show that the old James Carville adage is still correct. When it comes to the slowdown in health costs, it’s the economy, stupid.

Associated Press: “Some find health insurers have no record of them” Insurance companies are still trying to sort out cases of so-called health insurance orphans, customers for whom the government has a record that they enrolled, but the insurer does not. They are worried the process will grow more cumbersome as they deal with the flood of new customers who signed up in December as enrollment deadlines neared.

Wall Street Journal: Editorial Board: “Fast Times at ObamaCare High” The worst must be over for the Affordable Care Act because its boosters are taking credit for trends that began long before the law passed. Maybe ObamaCare should also get retroactive political credit for the germ theory of disease.

CNBC: “Consumers say they’re shelling out more for health insurance” Support for the Affordable Care Act has plummeted since late last summer, and people with employer-based health insurance say they increasingly are paying more for out-of-pocket medical expenses, a new Bankrate.com survey released Wednesday revealed.

Kaiser Health News: “Nonprofit Health Centers Go Into For-Profit Insurance Business” The nation’s 1,200 nonprofit community health centers receive strong federal support to treat millions of uninsured residents, but still face financial challenges. Some are responding with an unusual strategy – starting for-profit insurance plans.