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HealthCare.Gov won’t be running smoothly come December 1 and much more bad news for ObamaCare

Nov 26, 2013

By Dave Andrusko

Pro-abortion President Barack Obama

Pro-abortion President Barack Obama

The awful news about the roll-out of ObamaCare’s health insurance exchanges—bad as it’s been—promises to grow even worse, and very soon. Here are five items that have appeared in the last 24 hours; there could be 50.

#1. From The Denver Post

“Enrollment in the Affordable Care Act through Colorado’s health insurance exchange is barely half the state’s worst-case projection, prompting demands from exchange board members for better stewardship of public money. The shortfall could compromise the exchange’s ‘ability to deliver on promises made to Colorado citizens and threatens the funding stream for the exchange itself, according to board e-mails obtained by The Denver Post in an open records request. The exchange, meant for individuals and small groups buying insurance, had projected a lowest-level mid-November enrollment of 11,108, in a presentation to a board finance committee. The exchange announced Nov. 18 that it had signed up 6,001 Coloradans so far.”

#2. Remember how the President promised that the Healthcare.gov website would be purring like a kitten by December 1? There’s this remarkable lead from The Hill newspaper:

“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.

“CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille said errors that persist past this weekend would be ‘intermittent’ and, in line with a promise made by the White House, would not affect the vast majority of the site’s users.

“But Bataille acknowledged that some would still experience ‘periods of suboptimal performance’ by the system due to either heavy traffic or technical issues that are still being addressed.

“’The system will not work perfectly on Dec. 1, but it will work much better than it did in October,’ Bataille said.”

This is followed by this embarrassing revelation:

“The comments came after HealthCare.gov experienced an unscheduled outage on Monday for one hour. The CMS had recently touted the site for not randomly crashing. Bataille said the problem was remedied quickly by the site’s tech team.”

#3. Fox News’ Jim Angle wrote this morning

“Almost 80 million people with employer health plans could find their coverage canceled because they are not compliant with ObamaCare, several experts predicted.

“Their losses would be in addition to the millions who found their individual coverage cancelled for the same reason.

“Stan Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute said that in addition to the individual cancellations, ‘at least half the people on employer plans would by 2014 start losing plans as well.’ There are approximately 157 million employer health care policy holders.

“Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute added, ‘the administration estimated that approximately 78 million Americans with employer sponsored insurance would lose their existing coverage due to the Affordable Care Act.’”

#4. Also from The Hill newspaper. Justin Sink writes

“The White House, for at least the fifth time this year, is seeking to pivot to the economy, this time in a bid to change the subject from the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare.

“It’s a common play for the White House, which frequently seeks to refocus attention on its jobs and infrastructure agenda when facing political crises.

“The move is so familiar that NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd has dubbed it the ‘déjà pivot.’ … The formula is rote: Following a misstep or messaging error that battered Obama’s approval ratings, the White House announces events intended to promote the president’s economic agenda. “

#5. The Supreme Court agreed this morning to hear two challenges to the HHS mandate which compels employers to provide health coverage for drugs and procedures to which they have moral or religious objections.  As NRL News Today has noted elsewhere, the cases the Administration has won in lower courts have been over legal issues of “standing.” Where courts got to the substance of the challenge (that the mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion clause), Obama’s mandate has lost.

And none of these even touch on the President’s plummeting poll numbers on such basic questions as honesty, leadership, competence, admiration, and whether they agree with Mr. Obama on important issues (see “CNN poll reaffirms downward trajectory in all categories for President Obama who insists, ‘I’m not a particularly ideological person’”).

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Categories: ObamaCare