Healthcare.gov, the site where one can sign up for health insurance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (colloquially known as “Obamacare”) finally appears to be experiencing a turnaround for the better. The site has been the victim of a host of technical glitches and poor programming, leading to site shutdowns and chronic overloading. While the overloading issue has been fixed—the site logged 1.4 million users last week without crashing—there is some concern that insurers may not be receiving accurate application data from the site. Experts are concerned that the website may have difficulty coping with the expected spike in site traffic towards the end of the year as citizens scramble to sign up for coverage that will begin on January 1st.
There have been errors regarding 834 transmissions, which are sent by the exchange to insurance groups when someone signs up for one of their plans. However, the government has not released statistics regarding these transmission errors. The White House is confident that these errors will be fixed within the month.
Some individual insurance plans have been cancelled because of Obamacare’s reforms, contradicting the President’s earlier statements that Americans would be allowed to keep their current health care plan. These plans are being cancelled because Obamacare requires insurers to provide plans that meet minimum coverage requirements, including maternal health care and mental health care. Insurers were required to get rid of any plans that did not meet the requirements and create similar plans that followed Obamacare’s guidelines. Unfortunately, these new plans are usually more expensive than their predecessors, which has caused some businesses to drop health insurance for their employees.
Republicans have criticized Obama for not foreseeing and fixing these problems and use these site difficulties as a justification to repeal Obamacare.
Representative Todd Young of Indiana said Obama’s recent apology to the American people regarding the cancellations was “…what betrayal truly looks like.” Republicans like Young are promoting a “Keep Your Health Care Act” that is supposed to get rid of the cancellations issue, and will be voted on next week.
