Of course the Obama administration won’t take the blame for screwing up the ACA website. They had three and a half years to get this thing ready, and they chose instead to choose a non-bid contractor, hide any rate information from the public (which they knew were going to be higher before the election), and not bother testing extenstively before going live. The result? A website that is nearly impossible to use, that passes bad data to insurers, and that wasn’t ready for the rollout and won’t be ready for months without pouring more money and effort down the Obamacare hole. So what’s going on now?
Well, the contractor is blaming the Obama administration.
And one of the executives of the contractor says that the Obama Administration’s decision to hide the rates from the public until after they registered is a principal reason for its failure.
Prepared testimony from contractor Optum/QSSI blamed in part a “late decision” to require customers to register before browsing for insurance, which could have helped overwhelm the registration system.
“This may have driven higher simultaneous usage of the registration system that wouldn’t have occurred if consumers could window-shop anonymously,” said Andy Slavitt, representing QSSI’s parent company.
Of course, you also have the complexity argument. The contractors are insisting that no amount of testing could have prevented all the bugs in such a complicated system. I find that interesting, because using a government website, I was able to compare insurance policies from several companies at different levels of insurance when I was downsized to part-time last year. So they could give you rate comparisons when you shopped for your own insurance, but not when you shop for government insurance?
And oh yeah–when you do get a cost estimate, it’s drastically understating your rates.
But don’t worry. Companies are canceling insurance for thousands of employees, and hundreds of thousands of people on individual insurance are also getting cancellation notices in the mail–because of the Obamacare laws. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor–but only if you can keep that insurance coverage.
Even Jon Stewart is mocking the website and calling Sibelius a liar.
I’ve been paying for COBRA since I was downsized to part-time last summer. I’ve just been hired back full-time starting November 1st. Thankfully, my company’s plan works just fine within the new law, so I’m one of the few people who likes her doctor and gets to keep her doctor. Because I’m not individually insured. The rest of you? Blame Obama. And the people who voted for him.