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Weekly Address: President Obama – Enrolling in the Affordable Care Act Marketplace

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From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama discusses the launch of the Health Insurance Marketplace for the Affordable Care Act, which gives millions of Americans the opportunity to have access to affordable and reliable healthcare-many for the first time.

Transcript: Enrolling in the Affordable Care Act Marketplace

Hi, everybody. A few weeks ago, we launched an important new part of the Affordable Care Act.  

It’s called the Marketplace.  And for Americans without health insurance, and Americans who buy insurance on their own because they can’t get it at work, it’s a very big deal.  

If you’re one of those people, the Affordable Care Act makes you part of a big group plan for the first time.  The Marketplace is where you can apply and shop for affordable new health insurance choices.  It gathers insurers under one system to compete for your business.  And that choice and competition have actually helped bring prices down.

Ultimately, the easiest way to buy insurance in this Marketplace will be a new website, HealthCare.gov.  But as you may have heard, the site isn’t working the way it’s supposed to yet.  That’s frustrating for all of us who have worked so hard to make sure everyone who needs it gets health care.  And it’s especially frustrating for the Americans who’ve been trying to get covered.  The site has been visited more than 20 million times so far.  Nearly 700,000 people have applied for coverage already.  That proves just how much demand there is for these new quality, affordable health care choices.  And that’s why, in the coming weeks, we are going to get it working as smoothly as it’s supposed to.  We’ve got people working overtime, 24/7, to boost capacity and address these problems, every single day.

But even as we improve the website, remember that the website isn’t the only way to apply for coverage under these new plans.  We’ve updated HealthCare.gov to offer more information about enrolling over the phone, by mail, or in person with a specially-trained navigator who can help answer your questions.  Just call 1-800-318-2596 or visit LocalHelp.HealthCare.gov.  Don’t worry – these plans will not sell out.  We’re only a few weeks into a six-month open enrollment period, and everyone who wants insurance through the Marketplace will get it.

Some people have poked fun at me this week for sounding like an insurance salesman.  And that’s okay.  I’d still be out there championing this law even if the website were perfect.  I’ll never stop fighting to help more hardworking Americans know the economic security of health care.  That’s something we should all want.

That’s why it’s also interesting to see Republicans in Congress expressing so much concern that people are having trouble buying health insurance through the new website – especially considering they’ve spent the last few years so obsessed with denying those same people access to health insurance that they just shut down the government and threatened default over it.

As I’ve said many times before, I’m willing to work with anyone, on any idea, who’s actually willing to make this law perform better.  But it’s well past the time for folks to stop rooting for its failure.  Because hardworking, middle-class families are rooting for its success.

The Affordable Care Act gives people who’ve been stuck with sky-high premiums because of preexisting conditions the chance to get affordable insurance for the first time.  

This law means that women can finally buy coverage that doesn’t charge them higher premiums than men for the same care.  

And everyone who already has health insurance, whether through your employer, Medicare, or Medicaid, will keep the benefits and protections this law has already put in place.  Three million more young adults have health insurance on their parents’ plans because of the Affordable Care Act.  More than six million people on Medicare have saved an average of $1,000 on their prescription medicine because of the Affordable Care Act.  Last year, more than 8 million Americans received half a billion dollars in refunds from their insurers because of the Affordable Care Act.  And for tens of millions of women, preventive care like mammograms and birth control are free because of the Affordable Care Act.  

That’s all part of this law, and it’s here to stay.

We did not fight so hard for this reform for so many years just to build a website.  We did it to free millions of American families from the awful fear that one illness or injury – to yourself or your child – might cost you everything you’d worked so hard to build.  We did it to cement the principle that in this country, the security of health care is not a privilege for a fortunate few, but a right for every one of us to enjoy.  We have already delivered on part of that promise, and we will not rest until the work is done.

Thank you, and have a great weekend.

Bolding added.

~

Editor’s Note: The President’s Weekly Address diary is also the weekend open news thread. Feel free to leave links to other news items in the comment threads.


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/ 13 Comments

13 comments

  1. JanF

    We did not fight so hard for this reform for so many years just to build a website.  We did it to free millions of American families from the awful fear that one illness or injury – to yourself or your child – might cost you everything you’d worked so hard to build.  We did it to cement the principle that in this country, the security of health care is not a privilege for a fortunate few, but a right for every one of us to enjoy.

    Health care is NOT a privilege for the fortunate few … it is a right.

    THAT is why this is so important and why we will not give up just because there have been some bumps in the road.

  3. JanF

    In Wisconsin, one-term Governor Scott Walker decided to cut off his nose to spite his face and did not set up a health insurance exchange. So we are left using HealthCare.gov and waiting until the site is fixed if we want to purchase a policy online.

    I have been interacting with the web site since the first weekend of the rollout. When I was unable to create a login, I returned the next weekend: and was able to create a login. I tried to start an application, and the web site got stuck in a loop, not letting me proceed past a screen that asked for my already validated email address to be verified. I returned this past weekend and was able to start an application (I had to log in twice because it got stuck in a loop in the income section, the data must have “taken” because it got past that after I logged back in). However, it would not let me proceed the “additional information” … dead screen. I used the Live Chat to talk to a very nice person and they will have a level 2 person contact me by phone.

    The web site it huge and has a lot of moving parts and lots of branches where something happens and then links back. But I did find one thing that I am pretty sure should have been tested: Division by 12. When I entered my annual income, it returned to display two fields: Annual Income (nicely laid out) and Monthly Income of … 0.00. Sigh. I tried it several times just to make sure it was not operator error and it kept saying … 0.00.

    The new site does let me browse Wisconsin insurance policies without logging in and there are many available that appear to be reasonably priced. But until I can complete an application and find out how much of an offset I qualify for, I can’t go any further.

    Wisconsin residents will be paying 37% more than residents of Minnesota because the Democrats running the state of Minnesota’s government reviewed policies and worked to keep the premium prices down. The Republicans in Wisconsin put all their eggs in the Repeal Obamacare basket and now they are left with egg on their faces. People, especially rural people who are getting double screwed because BadgerCare is being shrunk, are not going to like that Governor DeadEyes threw them under the bus so that he could burnish his national teaparty creds for a presidential run. The national teaparty platform will get him Koch money but it will not get him votes in Wisconsin because it does not reflect Wisconsin values.

  4. JanF

    One reader glad that his old policy was dropped:

    I’ve been self-employed for 13 years. Most of that time, I’ve had an HSA with a high-deductible policy; the deductible has ranged from $3,000 to $5,500. A traditional individual policy would be cost-prohibitive because–although I have low blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol, work out regularly, take no prescriptions, and have no chronic conditions–I’m deemed to have preexisting conditions, basically because I’ve dared seek medical attention in the past.[…]

    Anyway, you may have seen in the past couple of days how some insurers are being forced to drop thousands of individual policies because they’re not ACA-compliant. My current policy is among those, so I’ve looked for a new policy with my insurer (Anthem). And, thanks to the ACA, I can finally get a more traditional policy because the insurer has to offer ACA-compliant plans and can’t exclude for preexisting conditions. As a result, I’m switching to a Silver level plan with a $2,000 deductible, free preventive care, reasonable co-pays ($30-$45) for doctors’ visits …

    That policy cost him $20 a month.

    On using the 800 number:

    I don’t hear many people discussing the fact that you can enroll in the federal exchange via the 800 number and can bypass trying to fill out the application form on the web site. After hitting the glitches on the web site, I called the 800 number and got through right away. A very professional woman enrolled me and said I should be receiving the comparison charts for healthcare plans in the regular mail within two weeks. I called back a couple of times to double-check on that and to ask a question or two and immediately got through each time I called.

  5. JanF

    Obama: Shutdown Was About More Than Health Care

    At the heart of the impasse that shuttered the government were deep disagreements about what role the government should play in helping Americans succeed, Obama told about 60 donors at a fundraiser for House Democrats.

    “The shutdown was about more than just health care,” Obama said. “It was about a contrast of visions, about what our obligations are to each other as fellow citizens.”

    “And we’ve got the better side of that argument,” Obama added.

    Sounds kind of like this guy:



    h/t @ericwolfson

  6. princesspat

    What’s Working in the Marketplace: The Data Services Hub

    The Hub is a routing tool – an information sharing tool. It is an efficient and secure way to rapidly verify the information submitted by consumers seeking a determination of what coverage options and financial assistance are available to them.

    ~snip~

    The Hub provides one connection to the common federal data sources needed to verify consumer application information for income, citizenship, immigration status, access to minimum essential coverage, etc.

    What the Hub Is Not

    It’s important to understand that the Hub is not a database.  It doesn’t retain or store information.  And the Hub queries only those systems necessary to determine your eligibility for what you apply for.  It is a model of efficiency and security because it eliminates the need for each Marketplace, state Medicaid agency, and CHIP agency to set up separate data connections to each of the systems that are in place to help you and your family.  

    How Many People Has It Helped?

    As of yesterday, nearly 700,000 Americans had completed an application through the Marketplaces – more than half of them through the federal Marketplace.  This does not count applications directly to Medicaid and CHIP agencies that also can use the Hub.

    h/t to ericlewisO

  7. princesspat

    The chasm between Affordable Care Act rollout and modern software development

    Now that the worst has happened to the most important policy initiative of the Barack Obama administration, skilled technologists from outside government need to brought in for short stints. Many coders are interested in serving, and government agencies need to relax civil-service restrictions to let this happen easily. In turn, government technologists should be embedded briefly with private companies so that they can bring current knowledge back to their agency desks. Procurement rules governing purchased assistance need to be rewritten, so that civil servants are able to choose the best rather than the cheapest.

    More fundamentally, it is no longer acceptable for policymakers and project managers to know so little about technology. Or for technologists to be treated as mere implementers. Government technologists have to be cross-trained in policy so that “data-driven policy making” can be more than a turn of phrase.

    Fourty five (!) years ago I was working at the  Wa. Secretary of State’s Office, watching some one of the first attempts to bring computer technology to the office. It was painfully apparent that the powers that be on both sides of the project were not communicating. No one seemed to be able to ask the right questions…..or to understand the answers. I wonder how much of the same problem is still existing.

  8. JanF

    From, quite appropriately, Freakout Nation: Republicans claim Obamacare site cost $634 million. They are only off by $564 million

    “The magic number Republicans have repeated over the past several weeks first appeared in a piece by Andrew Couts at Digital Trends just a week after the Obamacare rollout. According to Couts, the Healthcare.gov website cost $634 million. That number is actually derived from the total amount in government contracts related to health care received by the company building the website, CGI Federal, over the span of seven years.

    Seven years … hmmm. ACA passed in April 2010, no work could really start in earnest until SCOTUS weighed in in June 2012 … 7 years … 7 years. Maybe they meant elebenty years, another imaginary number.

    And then there is this:

    A report from the non-partisan Sunlight Foundation, however, finds that the website cost significantly less: around $70 million. Kaitlin Devine, author of the report, arrived at the number after highlighting all of the task orders for the CGI Federal contract.

    What??!!?? Only including the task orders for the actual web site work and not the other thousands of task related to other government based web sites that CGI Federal does?? The good news for Republicans is that the $70 million cost will never be reported and even if it were it would not be believed by those who have already decided that HealthCare.gov is the biggest government boondoggle ever.

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