That’s a very good thing, even if technical difficulties prevented many of them from completing the job.
It’s constitutional – deal with it
On the first day of sign-ups for President Barack Obama’s health care reform, a wave of consumers across the nation, including many Texans, sought Tuesday to enroll in online health care marketplaces, but glitches with the federal website prevented them from obtaining information about coverage plans and rates.
“I wanted to get in and see what my options are to get signed up,” said Suezen Salinas, 31, who sought help at Legacy Community Health Services in Houston. “Apparently, there are a few glitches in the system, so it’s not letting us get past a certain place to be able to set up my profile and begin.” Salinas described herself as “disappointed, but I’m still excited.”
By midafternoon the Obama administration sought to quell the complaints from across the country.
Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, contended problems were resolved and that consumers were, in fact, able to enroll. But during a telephone conference with reporters she refused to disclose a number, saying “we decided not to release that yet.”
Tavenner said 2.8 million people visited the federal healthcare.gov website since it opened Tuesday morning, but that it was unclear how many of those were repeat users.
“This is day one of a six-month process,” Tavenner noted, adding that people have until March 31 to enroll for insurance. Those who enroll by Dec. 15 will begin coverage on Jan. 1.
As the story notes, five times more than have ever been on the Medicare.gov website at one time were on healthcare.gov trying to use the exchanges. That’s truly incredible, and speaks very loudly to the deep, abiding need for this service. Just imagine for a minute how many more people could be getting coverage right now if the Republican Party hadn’t been engaged in a four year jihad to sabotage and undermine it at every step.
The Trib has a report that was updated a couple of times during the day that reported on some of the experiences folks had in Texas. This bit from their most recent update was really annoying to read.
The Brownsville Community Health Center had 50 people show up on Tuesday ready to sign up for health coverage — many even brought pay stubs and income documentation — but not a single one of them had an email address.
“If you don’t include an email address, they won’t let you through,” said Christela Gomez, the special projects coordinator and lead certification application counselor at the center. Although the center considered helping people sign up for an email account, Gomez said many weren’t comfortable with the idea because they did not have a computer to access the email address later. “Quite a few didn’t even know what an email address was,” she added.
The center’s certified application counselors helped the patients fill out paper applications, but they’ll have to wait for a written response from the federal government to find out whether additional documentation is needed or whether those applicants qualify for tax credits.
Some of the questions on the paper application were difficult for patients to answer, said Gomez. One man who came in to receive assistance finding health coverage currently works as a truck driver, she said. He earns 30 cents per mile, and his income can range from $50 to $100 a week.
“We didn’t really know how to fill in the income part with him,” she said, adding, “We kind of just wrote it in on the side, his situation.”
Paula Gomez, the executive director of the center, said her patients are mostly adults who are too young to qualify for Medicare. Although most of her patients have jobs, pay taxes and want to cooperate with the health care system, there are extenuating circumstances like language barriers that make it difficult.
“I’m sure there are pockets like ours all over the country,” Gomez said. She added that the federal government should be more flexible and consider the different situations people are facing across the country. “They think in terms of everything that’s going on in Washington, D.C., but they don’t look at the reality of the rest of the world in the United States,” she said.
You know what might have addressed that problem? If the state of Texas had created its own exchange, since the whole idea behind state-based exchanges was that local folks would know their interests and their population better than a bunch of distant bureaucrats in DC. If we lived in a state whose leaders cared about its people, that’s what we would have gotten. Instead, we’re stuck with the likes of Rick Perry, David Dewhurst, Greg Abbott, and the like, and this is the result. The fact that we’re using the federal exchanges here in Texas doesn’t mean that people won’t get signed up, and it doesn’t mean that they won’t be able to buy quality plans. But the experience could have been better, and it could have been more Texas-oriented, if Perry et al gave a damn. I understand politics, and I get doing what you can to screw your enemies. I don’t get screwing your own people.
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