President Obama went on the offensive to defend the benefits of the Affordable Care Act amid a rollout of the federal government's insurance marketplace website that has been disappointing, at best, at the same time that he assembles a sort of health tech dream team to fix the problems before it's too late.
Obama was flanked by a number of Americans who have successfully enrolled, and was introduced by Janice Baker, a 59-year-old owner of a small dog boarding business in Delaware and the first person in the state to successfully complete the process -- and set to save about $150 a month in premiums compared to the limited small group options she said she faced prior to the ACA.
What Baker did not say at the White House Rose Garden was that it took her seven hours to get through the enrollment process in the state-federal partnership marketplace, as she explained in a media conference with Delaware state health officials last week.
"Have patience," she said.
Obama defended the new insurance options, patient protections and delivery reforms his signature law is bringing and noted that the website is not the only way to enroll. But he was also forthright about the problems -- and called the initial shoddiness inexcusable for consumers in the world's wealthiest country.
"There's no sugarcoating it. The website has been too slow. People have been getting stuck during the application process. And I think it's fair to say that nobody's more frustrated by that than I am. Precisely because the product is good, I want the cash registers to work, I want the checkout lines to be smooth, so I want people to be able to get this great product. And there's no excuse for the problems. And these problems are getting fixed," Obama said, with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius looking from the first row, as CSPAN was keen to show, but not taking the stage.
Obama also reiterated a message HHS outlined in a recent blog post. The "best and brightest from both inside and outside government" are assembling to "scrub in with the team" and help "solve some of the more complex technical issues" plaguing the site. (Aside from the federal government's chief technology officer, athenahealth co-founder Todd Park, the members of the new fix-it team are still unknown.)
The Obama Administration is also partly adopting the strategy of many successful tech companies -- iteration in pursuit of improvement.
From day one, a primary criticism of healthcare.gov was that it required shoppers and applicants to create an account before being able to see what plans are available or get a sense of their likely subsidies. The site now gives consumers the ability to see what plans are available to them based on their state, home county and age.
Consumers pursuing the federal marketplace who also want to get a price quote with subsidies factored in, however, may have do a bit of on-the-fly calculations. Unlike some state exchanges which will show the actual price of the plans and the price based on a given income, the federal marketplace will require consumers to go through the application process to see what it will cost them, as this disclaimer mentions:
Meanwhile, Obama is hoping that some of the negative attention on the website's shaky rollout is opportunity for Americans to learn, if they don't already know it, that "the Affordable Care Act is not just a website."
And "unlike the day after Thanksgiving for latest playstations or high definition TVs, the insurance plans don't run out," he said, noting that open enrollment lasts through the end of the year, and may even be extended.
"In the meantime," as the glitches big and small are resolved, "I am willing to work with anyone on any idea to make this law perform even better," Obama said.
"The point is, the essence of the law, the health insurance that's available to people is working just fine," he said, noting that about 85 percent of Americans are keeping their current insurance while the previously dysfunctional individual insurance market is being reformed for people not covered by employer-sponsored insurance or Medicare.
"Part of the challenge," he added, "is a lot of people may not remember what it's like to buy insurance the traditional way."