Today's door-to-door insurance salesmen may seem worlds apart from the residents of these often-tattered row houses, but they share one big thing in common. They haven't been able to afford insurance either. They face the daunting task of helping to convince the nearly 200,000 uninsured residents of Philadelphia County that they can — and should — buy it now. The new exchange's success, the cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act, will hinge on whether it can meet the federal goal of 7 million enrollees, but also on whether it can sign up enough healthy younger people like these canvassers to make up for all the ailing older ones.
These first two weeks have been rocky for the state health insurance exchanges. The online marketplaces opened across the country Oct. 1, with computer glitches and staffing shortages. Even the states that have agreed to run their own are having a hard time. In states that have not embraced the Affordable Care Act, the federal government is struggling to fill in the gap. As Alexandra Dixon threads her way among the people waiting to see a doctor at the Community Clinic, Inc., in Silver Spring, Md., she introduces herself with a bright smile and an outstretched hand.
Consumers shopping for health coverage in new online marketplaces may scratch their heads when they come to a handful of plans in Virginia: Why do some cost more than $1,800 a month? No, the plans do not include gold-plated hospital beds or guaranteed same-day access to doctors. Instead, those premiums reflect an add-on benefit for a type of costly surgery for obesity which makes them up to six times more expensive than plans without such coverage. That means a Virginia consumer considering gastric bypass or bariatric surgery will have to pay up to $1,500 a month more for plans that cover the procedure.
Obamacare officials are defending their health insurance exchanges today after an online poll suggested that few Americans are happy with the newly launched program. As many as 20 million Americans have gone online to check out their new insurance options since Oct. 1, according to the Associated Press-GfK poll. But just 27 percent of those surveyed between Oct. 3 and 7 said the launch had gone "extremely," "very" or "somewhat well." Forty percent of Americans polled said the launch had gone "not too well" or "not well at all," according to the poll, and another 30 percent said they didn't know enough to say.
Problems with the federal government's new health-care Web site have attracted legions of armchair analysts who speak of its problems with "virtualization" and "load testing." Yet increasingly, they are saying the root cause is not simply a matter of flawed computer code but rather the government's habit of buying outdated, costly and buggy technology. The U.S. government spends more than $80 billion a year for information-technology services, yet the resulting systems typically take years to build and often are cumbersome when they launch.
The government's new health insurance marketplaces are drawing lots of rotten tomatoes in early reviews, but people are at least checking them out. Seven percent of Americans report that somebody in their household has tried to sign up for insurance through the health care exchanges, according to an AP-GfK poll. While that's a small percentage, it could represent more than 20 million people. Three-fourths of those who tried to sign up reported problems, though, and that's reflected in the underwhelming reviews. Overall, just 7 percent of Americans say the rollout of the health exchanges has gone well. Far more deem it a flop.