Econintersect: Difficulties continue for the online implementation of the nation’s public healthcare exchanges. While the “big one”, the federal government HIX (health insurance exchange) is still not functioning in any significant way, some of the state exchanges have provided numbers indicating that there are actually insurance applications being accepted. A picture is starting to emerge indicating what the level of public interest is likely to be. And the operational efficiency of those few exchanges that are functioning appears to be improving.
October 1 was the launch date for the public HIX. Some of the exchanges saw the launch vehicles explode on the launching pad. Others experienced various levels of hiccups and bigger problems. In the two weeks since, a limited amount of data has become available indicating that not quite all systems have been failures.
Here’s the very short list:
- California has started 94,500 applications from a total of 1.5 million unique online visitors and 100,000 phone calls.
- Kentucky has enrolled more than 9,000 by 10 October.
- Maryland has enrolled 1,120 by October 10.
- Nevada has created 21,884 accounts, handled 5,924 Medicaid and tax credit applications for health care coverage and accepted applications for 806 people.
Meanwhile, as USA Today just reported, the national HIX operated by the U.S. government is almost non-functional:
Tuesday, Millward Brown Digital released an analysis showing that 36,000 of the 9.47 million people who visited the site the first week made it to the enrollment page at healthcare.gov, with the assumption that only a small percentage of the visitors were able to enroll. HHS has not released enrollment numbers. Millward Brown is an international market-research group.
But so far the public seems not to be reacting much to the HIX problems. A Gallup poll taken 12-13 October shows a shift in opinion about Obamacare over the past two and a half years. The number of Americans who want to repeal or scale back the law is now 50%, down from 57% in January 2011. The biggest shift has been on the other end of the opinion spectrum as a significant number who wanted to expand the law shortly after passage are now of the opinion that the law should be kept as is.
Support for the law as is or with improvements is little changed from January 2011, at 37-38%. The loss of opposition has largely moved to no opinion.
The opinions are divided along political lines in a predictable way.
And finally there are the cynical who argue that the website failures are planned to avoid exposing how costly Obamacare plans actually are. See Avik Roy at Forbes.
Sources:
- California exchange reports nearly 100K application starts (Allison Bell, Health Life Pro, 16 October 2013)
- Maryland’s Obamacare health exchange hit with problems (Meredith Cohn, The Baltimore Sun, 14 October 2013)
- Health care exchange still plagued by problems (Kelly Kennedy, USA Today, 16 October 2013)
- Americans’ Desire to Modify Healthcare Law Down From 2011 (Frank Newport, Gallup, 15 October 2013)
- Obamacare’s Website Is Crashing Because It Doesn’t Want You To Know How Costly Its Plans Are (Avik Roy, Forbes, 14 October 2013)