Washington: New Year’s Day will bring a fresh test for President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, as hundreds of thousands of Americans will begin to use the program’s new medical coverage for the first time.
For the nation’s healthcare system as well as its politics, the stakes are huge in tomorrow’s launch of the programme known as Obamacare.
For anxious Democrats with an eye on the 2014 congressional elections, it is a chance for the Obama administration to rebound from the disastrous rollout of the website that enrols people in private coverage through the programme — and show that the White House’s effort to help millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans is finally gaining its footing. Or, as Republican congressman Fred Upton and other critics of Obamacare warned in recent days, tomorrow could represent the beginning of another debacle that fuels Republicans’ push to make dissatisfaction with Obamacare the chief issue in the November elections.
More immediately, the question is whether the program will work as advertised on January 1, after a chaotic enrollment period in which problems with the HealthCare.gov website led to a series of deadline extensions and undermined public support for Obamacare and the president.
The White House said early on Sunday that about 1.1 million people have enrolled in coverage plans through the federally run HealthCare.gov, which covers 36 states. That figure does not include the latest enrolment data from 14 states that run their own healthcare enrolment sites — including California, Connecticut, Kentucky, New York and Connecticut — and where response to Obamacare has been enthusiastic, so the total enrolment nationally is likely more than 1.5 million.
That is well short of the 3.3 million enrollees administration officials were hoping for by now, but it represents a dramatic improvement from a month ago, when barely 150,000 had signed up because of a series of technical problems with the HealthCare.gov site.
Many of the newly insured under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - about 975,000 on the federally run exchange — signed up just ahead of a deadline on December 24 to receive benefits on January 1, giving health insurers a tight framework to create accounts that can be accessed by doctors. One fear, as expressed by administration officials and insurance industry executives, is that some people who need medical care during the first days of 2014 will head to the doctor, only to find there is no record of their new insurance.
That could mean patients would have to pay upfront and submit a bill to their insurance carriers later. And even though the Obamacare program is not directly responsible for the private insurance purchased through its online exchanges, White House officials have acknowledged that any early problems with the coverage are likely to reflect on the administration.
Some insurance executives say that even a few stories of coverage problems during the next few weeks - which seems inevitable when dealing with such a massive program - could damage the reputations of the White House and the healthcare overhaul.
Reuters
