Will Healthcare.gov work when open enrollment begins on Saturday? That's the question on the minds of Americans who will be logging on to buy health insurance on the government's website. "We're very confident we're going to be in good shape beginning Saturday," said Kevin Counihan, the man charged with running the federal government's insurance marketplaces. In an interview with CBS News National Correspondent Wyatt Andrews, Counihan was confident about the website's functionality, saying, "This is not last year. This is not last year."
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell is under pressure to deliver what her predecessor couldn't: a smooth enrollment period for ObamaCare. With new insurance sign-ups set to begin Saturday, Burwell has sought to manage expectations, touting improvements to HealthCare.gov while warning that there will be bumps along the way. "Will we have challenges? Yes. But the experience is one, overall, that will be a positive one," Burwell said Monday in a discussion hosted by the Center for American Progress. The cautious approach stands in contrast to former HHS chief Kathleen Sebelius, who was lampooned by both parties for her repeated assurances about HealthCare.gov's readiness before its disastrous debut.
In the past few years, health care organizations in the United States have spent tens of billions of dollars on IT. Much of this investment has been in response to the "meaningful use" section of the American Investment & Recovery Act of 2009 and provisions in the Affordable Care Act of 2010, which required health providers to invest in patients' electronic health records and allow for electronic data reporting to the government. But many providers are still not leveraging the vast amounts of data that they are collecting to improve the quality of care, increase patient satisfaction, and reduce costs. Indeed, most information available to health care workers and managers is still retrospective.
When the Supreme Court takes up yet another challenge to the president's health care law in March, the outcome could have a devastating impact on millions of Americans receiving subsidized health coverage through its exchanges. Almost immediately after the court announced it would hear King v. Burwell, the now-famous case that centers on whether people enrolled on the federal exchange can receive federal subsidies, legal experts began predicting grave news for Obamacare. In King v. Burwell, the plaintiff challenges language in the law that says enrollees can receive insurance subsidies when they purchase health insurance on an exchange "established by the state."
Idaho on Saturday becomes the latest state to launch its own health insurance exchange under the federal health law, with marketplace officials promising an easier shopping experience for consumers and greater responsiveness to insurance agents. But the exchange, yourhealthidaho.org, will be challenged to do as well as the federal insurance exchange during the first open enrollment period that ended last March. About 76,000 Idahoans signed up for private coverage at healthcare.gov, one of the most successful enrollments in any state. Idaho will be one of a dozen states, along with Washington, D.C., to run its own online marketplace this year — and the only one whose state government is completely controlled by Republicans.
Maryland's health insurance exchange has been tested and is ready for consumers to begin buying policies Saturday during the first enrollment fair of the season, according to Isabel FitzGerald, the state's information technology secretary brought in to ready the online portal. "The only thing left to do is go live on the 15th," she told the exchange board Wednesday during its last scheduled meeting before the new website's launch. The marketplace was created in Maryland under the federal Affordable Care Act to sell insurance plans to those who couldn't get coverage from their employers, but the site crashed at the start of the inaugural open enrollment period in October 2013 and worked so poorly that enrollment was extended farther into 2014.