Glitches erode health pitch
Obama accused of overselling law amid clunky site
WASHINGTON — As the pitchman for his landmark health care law, President Barack Obama promised to make buying insurance as easy as buying a plane ticket online or a “TV on Amazon.” It would be simple, he said.
If there were problems, the president predicted, they would be “glitches.”
And he said, “If you like the plan you have, you can keep it.”
Such claims have come back to haunt the president and his allies less than a month into the launch of the online insurance marketplaces at the heart of his health care legislation. With the federal website hobbled by bad design and thousands of policyholders receiving cancellation notices, Obama’s promises are not being realized — prompting charges of deception from some Republicans and concessions from some allies that elements of the law were oversold.
The fallout is only the latest chapter in this White House’s three-year struggle to sell the public on the Affordable Care Act, which could come to define the president’s legacy.
Publicly, the White House continued Tuesday to defend the president’s pre-launch salesmanship.
“The purpose here wasn’t to do anything be- yond encourage people to make themselves aware of the options available to them,” press secretary Jay Carney said.
Some officials who worked on the rollout now say they wish they’d left themselves a little wiggle room. They could have better played up ways to sign up outside of the website, such as the call centers, said one official, requesting anonymity to discuss the planning process.
The first administration official to testify before Congress on the matter apologized Tuesday.
“This initial experience has not lived up to our expectations or the expectations of the American people, and it is not acceptable,” Marilyn Tavenner, head of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told the House Ways and Means Committee
Tavenner’s agency oversaw the development of the site, intended to link consumers with affordable private health insurance plans that meet standards outlined in the 2010 law. Tavenner vowed that the site would be running smoothly by the end of the November.
But for the first time since the Oct. 1 launch, criticism of the administration moved beyond the website’s technical woes. Hundreds of thousands of people who buy insurance on the individual market have received notices that their policies will be canceled or amended — and their premiums on new policies could rise.
Thenotices are a result of provisions in the law that created new minimum requirements for health insurance coverage sold in the individual market. Under the Affordable Care Act, policies sold or renewed after Jan. 1 must cover maternity care and mental health. They cannot deny coverage because of preexisting conditions or charge higher premiums based on gender.
To experts, these adjustmentswere a long-expected outcome of the law’s at- tempt to regulate a market some argue offered shoddy coverage and kept premiums low by discriminating against sick people. Roughly 5 percent of the population — or about15 million people — buy plans on the individual market.
“It was always expected that once the clock struck midnight on December 31st, that the rules of the game in the individual insurance market would change and that meant that policies sold under the old rules could no longer be offered,” said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
But critics Tuesday accused the White House and administration officials of deceiving the public about the law.
“The whitehouse.gov website says, if you want to keep the health insurance that you’ve got, you can keep it, and now they’re being told they can’t. That’s a lie,” said Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill.
The White House noted that the vast majority of insured people, who are insured through their employer or through Medicare or Medicaid, will not see any changes to their plans. Officials also argued that insurers have leeway in how and when they alter the plans to meet the new standards.
“They want to keep these people enrolled,” said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry group.
Still, the issue is likely to continue, particularly as the website troubles keep the White House from countering the criticism with signs of successful enrollment on a large scale.
And Democratic allies Tuesday acknowledged the president could be more careful with his pitch.
The president’s statement about keeping insurance was “not precise enough,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters Tuesday.
Sen. Joe Manchin, a frequent Democratic critic of the law, said the administration’s “don’t worry” mantra has worn thin: “Well, people back in West Virginia are worried now.”