WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama and his HealthCare.gov website face another critical test starting this week, as Americans who have been unable to enroll in health coverage under Obamacare rush to a site that continues to face challenges.
A day after the administration said it met its weekend deadline for making HealthCare.gov operate smoothly for most users, networks of volunteer organisations are expected to resume enrollment activities after a long US holiday weekend, many of them with backlogs of would-be applicants waiting for access.
While saying HealthCare.gov had improved, Obama adviser Jeffrey Zients also warned that peak traffic volumes during the coming weeks could overwhelm it as consumers scramble to sign up before a December 23 deadline for coverage that begins on January 1.
Enroll America, the nonprofit group that serves as a flagship for private sector enrollment efforts under Obama’s landmark healthcare law, said it planned to launch a new “Coverage is Coming” push, with more than 1,000 events over the next three weeks.
Aids Alabama, a statewide non-profit organisation that received a federal grant to help people enroll, had been relying largely on paper applications to sign people up until last week, when they noticed major improvement in the website, said Lauren Banks, the organisation’s director of policy and advocacy.
One glitch the organisation came across last week involved apparently incorrect information about tax subsidies, Banks said. For example, she said, people who appeared to be eligible for subsidies given their income levels were told they did not qualify.
Banks said the organisation planned a radio campaign as part of a push to get people enrolled by December 23 so they could have coverage starting next year.
The White House, which plans to hold public education events about the healthcare law throughout December, will hold a Youth Summit tomorrow to help drive outreach and enrollment over the remaining four-month enrollment period. The number who need coverage starting January 1 could include millions of uninsured Americans with preexisting health conditions and others who have been notified that their current health plans will expire at year-end because they do not meet Obamacare’s standards for benefits and consumer protection.
Zients said that a five-week emergency “tech surge” had doubled the capacity of the online health insurance portal that is crucial to helping people shop for insurance plans. The administration said the effort’s key improvement was to increase HealthCare.gov’s capacity to 50,000 simultaneous users, which would allow the site to handle a minimum of 800,000 users per day.
Longer-term questions remain about whether the program will be able to enroll the estimated 7 million people it needs by the end of March to be financially viable, including millions of healthy, young enrollees who are needed to keep the programme’s costs in check.
Reuters
