“One in four Americans who think they signed up for Obamacare through HealthCare.gov may not actually have signed up at all,” Marc A. Thiessen writes at the Washington Post. The result is that January 1st “is going to be a train wreck for many Americans:”
Even after re-launching the Web site last week and assuring Americans that it was working with “private-sector velocity and effectiveness,” the Obama administration now admits that the system continues to mess up one in 10 applications. Since the volume of people trying to sign up will likely grow each day as the Dec. 23 deadline to enroll for Jan. 1 coverage approaches, a significant number could be in for a rude New Year’s awakening when they learn that they are uninsured. At least when Americans could not access Obamacare on the Web, they knew they had no insurance. Now many think they have signed up for health coverage but really have not.
The same problem appears to be happening in the state exchanges, as well. Insurers in Minnesota recently complained to state exchange officials, “At this late date, the health plan companies do not have most of the names or information on individuals who have enrolled through MNsure.” The state exchanges in Hawaii and Maryland have been such a disaster that their directors have both resigned. In Washington state, the exchange has been giving thousands of people incorrect subsidy data. Insurers in New York and Kentucky (held up as model exchanges) have also reported receiving erroneous data similar to that coming from the federal Web site.
In other words, Jan. 1 is going to be a train wreck for many Americans.
How will the Obama administration fix this impending disaster before the end of the year? Apparently, the plan is for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid to send insurers a list on Dec. 23 of all the people who signed up in December. Insurers will then have to check that government list against their own roster of customers — many by hand. They will have eight days to identify and correct all the enrollment errors.
Keep in mind that millions of Americans have lost their insurance because of Obamacare and need to be enrolled before the new year to avoid gaps in coverage. It will be nearly impossible for insurers to process all those new applications in eight days, much less find and fix the mistakes generated by the federal and state exchanges, which means it is probable that many Americans may not learn whether they are insured until well after Jan. 1.
Indeed, there is a growing possibility that there will be more uninsured Americans at the start of the new year than there were before the launch of Obamacare.
But does the president view that as a bug or a feature? In any case, as Wired magazine founder Louis Rossetto tells Nick Gillespie of Reason, “In its death throes, the megastate is going to make a lot of mess:”
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