President Obama’s top health official said Tuesday that users who encountered the balky federal Obamacare website over the past eight weeks should expect “to have a significantly different user experience by the end of the month.”
In a conference call, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius doubled down on the administration’s long-standing vow to have HealthCare.gov working for most users by December and urged state-level officials to keep lobbying for the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act if their states have not yet opted to.
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She also cheered on private-plan enrollment, saying it will pick up in the coming weeks as the website improves and churches and other groups tout Obamacare in their communities.
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“We are now eight weeks into a 26-week open enrollment period,” she said.
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States that opted to set up their own health exchanges under the law are reporting a “November surge” in enrollment, but 36 states that relied on HealthCare.gov are seeing poor results because the website has been hampered by capacity and software issues since its Oct. 1 debut.
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Additionally, the Obama administration is deflecting criticism over millions of cancelled plans in the individual market that do not meet Obamacare’s standards.
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But Mr. Obama recently said state regulators and insurers can let residents keep their barebones plans, and Mrs. Sebelius said Tuesday that some “perspective” is needed to understand the situation.
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She said the plans at issue offered few protections and tended to change annually, anyway, and that Americans typically stayed in the individual market for only a year or so.
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Republican lawmakers are pointing to a slice of constituents, however, who liked their minimum-coverage plans and thought they could keep them.
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Lawmakers like Pennsylvania State Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Democrat, tried to reassure Mrs. Sebelius on her conference call, saying, “Don’t let them get you down.”
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