Administration: Healthcare.gov On Target To Work For Most By Nov. 30
Administration officials and consumer advocates say that the enrollment website serving residents of 36 states is becoming easier for people to use, but insurers warn that flaws continue to hinder health plans. Officials acknowledge that some users will continue to experience outages and error messages. Meanwhile, Bloomberg looks at the president's efforts to monitor the situation.
The Washington Post: Obamacare Update: Consumers See Progress But Insurers Smell Trouble
As the Obama administration closes in on its self-imposed deadline to fix the troubled online health insurance marketplace, consumer advocates say it is becoming easier for people to sign up for coverage but insurers warn that critical flaws continue to hinder participating health plans (Somashekhar and Goldstein, 11/25).
CBS News: HealthCare.Gov On Track In Spite Of Another Outage, Officials Say
HealthCare.gov experienced an "unscheduled outage" for about an hour Monday morning, an Obama administration official confirmed Monday, but the administration maintains that the federal website, which serves as the portal for the Obamacare marketplaces in 36 states, will work for the "vast majority" of users by next week. "We continue to be on track to meeting the goals that we established for ourselves and established for the website on Nov. 30," White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters. He called the website a "work in progress" (Condon, 11/25).
The Hill: Healthcare Website Won't Be Perfect On Dec. 1, Administration Says
Obama administration officials said Monday that some visitors to HealthCare.gov will experience outages, slow response times or try-again-later messages in December. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) delivered the message in the latest attempt to downplay expectations for Nov. 30, the administration’s self-imposed deadline for fixing ObamaCare’s federal enrollment site (Viebeck, 11/25).
The Hill: White House: O-Care Site Fixes On Track
The White House said Monday that teams remain "on track" to have technical issues with the ObamaCare website resolved with less than a week to go before a self-imposed deadline to have the website working (Sink, 11/25).
McClatchy: Obama Officials: HealthCare.Gov On Target To Work For Most By Nov. 30
The Obama administration on Monday expressed guarded confidence that it’s on track to get the troubled Healthcare.gov website running properly by Nov. 30, its self-imposed deadline. "The system will not work perfectly on Dec. 1, but it will operate much better than it did in October," Julie Bataille, communications director at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said during a telephone briefing (Pugh, 11/25).
Kaiser Health News: Websites Step Up To Fill Federal Void
Almost two months after its inglorious rollout, the healthcare.gov website appears to be slowly recuperating. But even if it is 80 percent healed by November's end, as some public statements suggest, it likely won't be the promised seamless shopping experience where consumers can compare plans and prices and see if they qualify for premium and cost-sharing subsidies. Several websites have stepped into the breach and are helping consumers unravel the differences among the various health insurance policies (Calandra, 11/25).
Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reports that the president receives nightly progress reports on the fixes --
Bloomberg: Obama Nightly Reading Reveals Angst About Health-Site Fix
By day, Jeffrey Zients drives around Washington’s Beltway, overseeing the private contractors and government officials racing to fix the flawed Obamacare website. By night, President Barack Obama gets a rundown of Zients’ progress from White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough during their evening stroll along the South Lawn. A fuller report follows in a briefing book Obama takes upstairs to the first-family’s quarters for late-night reading (11/26).