Read nyceve's rec listed diary, and followed the link through to Bob Laszewski's post entitled "The Obamacare Rollout: The Administration Needs a Plan B––Now!", and got to thinking about the real scale of the rollout disaster -- and it is looking like a genuine disaster -- and trying to think if there's anything to be done to get ahead of what just might be a genuine political defeat for the Democratic Party in next years elections.
What follows is a succinct statement of the problem from the WaPo:
Here's how Robert Laszewksi, an insurance consultant, put it in a note to clients earlier this morning: This means that the insurance companies have 32 days to reprogram their computer systems for policies, rates, and eligibility, send notices to the policyholders via US Mail, send a very complex letter that describes just what the differences are between specific policies and Obamacare compliant plans, ask the consumer for their decision — and give them a reasonable time to make that decision — and then enter those decisions back into their systems without creating massive billing, claim payment, and provider eligibility list mistakes.All by January 1.
To explicate: According to Laszewski, we know that there are 1) over 4 million who have received cancellation letters and 2) many more (who knows how many millions) who have tried to investigate the healthcare.gov website, but who haven't been able to sign up; and they all need to have their applications processed by December 15th, in order to have their policies in effect by January 1st.Bob Laszewski -- The Administration Needs a Plan B––Now!
Then there are all of those people who want to buy coverage for the first time on January 1. Like those who have received cancellation letters, they also have to sign-up by December 15 to have any hope of being on the rolls by January 1. And, no one ever planned for the possibility that we would have back end-loaded hundreds of thousands or even millions of people into a two-week period between December 1 and December 15.We can all debate just how many people will eventually sign-up for Obamacare or whether the administration has any chance of making its first year goal of 7 million people. But, there is no doubt in my mind that hundreds of thousands if not millions of people do want to sign-up and be covered on January 1. Clearly, there are lots of people who have been patiently waiting for the day they could get coverage for their pre-existing conditions and who need the subsidies to buy insurance. And, then there are the millions who have already received their cancellation notices in the individual market and need to enroll in a new plan by January 1.
The administration needs a Plan B and they need it now.
Watching President Obama's demeanor at the press conference, it looks like he's acknowledging that the website is not going to be fixed by December 1st. No, he didn't say that, and he may even still believe (or hope) that it will be working by then. Even if it's working by then though, will it be prepared for that kind of volume? Color me, and lot's of other, skeptical. Bob Laszewski -- Rollout Week 5:
The most urgent need is for the government to fix the back-end enrollment transactions between the government and the health insurance plans (the 834 problem). It will be impossible to conduct any kind of high volume enrollment through the health portal's front door so long as the data being transmitted to the insurance companies is unreliable.Has the government made progress in fixing the large variety of detailed 834 transaction issues?
Yes. But the progress so far is incremental and nowhere near enough to be able to go to high volume processing.
The Obama administration finally seems to have a strong group of experienced managers in charge of fixing Healthcare.gov. I don't mean to pile anymore bad news on them then they already have. But I also have to report that the confidence that this can all get fixed by December 1 is not high among the people on the other end of those 834 transactions.
Now, don't get me wrong: this is a problem that people created, and people can solve it. It can be done. But we have to have a realistic view of what is and is not possible in the current political environment.
Because if there is a need for any, and I'll go so far as to repeat that, if there is a need for ANY legislative fix, it won't happen unless we take back the House in 2014. Anybody disagree with me about that? Didn't think so.