The 2008 presidential campaign never really ended for Barack Obama – everything he does and says is a political calculation or stump speech, and this week is no different. He began the week by declaring “mission accomplished” with the re-relaunch of Healthcare.gov and traveling around to tout the amazing awesomeness of his wondrous plan. He vowed, “We're not going back,” and insisted that repeal won't happen “as long as I'm president.” But we already knew he's far too narcissistic to admit defeat, so he'll just plant the victory flag in the wreckage and press on.
And wreckage it is. After the Dec. 1 “fixed it” announcement, security experts warned that the site might be more vulnerable now than it was before. The White House boasted of 400 bug fixes and improvements, but as David Kennedy, CEO of the online security firm TrustedSec, put it, “When you recode the application to fix these 400 bugs – they were rushing this out of the door to get the site at least so it can work a little bit – you're introducing more security flaws as you go along with it because you don't even check that code.”
Insurers objected as well, saying that, no, actually Healthcare.gov still doesn't work. The back end of the website, where insurers are notified of and paid for the product sold, isn't fully functional. That's right – insurers are not always being notified that consumers signed up for coverage, and they're also not being paid for the policies. Not to worry though; insurers will almost surely receive a bailout for Obama's “fixing” of policy cancellations, as well as payment for an estimate of what's owed for policies sold. That's on top of $1 trillion in subsidies over the next decade.
As far as consumers and coverage, the 126,000 Americans who supposedly managed to navigate Healthcare.gov to obtain insurance may not have actually succeeded. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney says “there's a joint effort to reach out to those who have enrolled to make sure that every step is being – that they know they need to take all the necessary steps to ensure that that coverage kicks in.” In other words, if you thought you signed up, you might want to double check that you actually signed up. Healthcare.gov is still generating errors with applications, duplicate applications and other assorted technical “glitches” that are preventing coverage from being secured for roughly one-third of applicants. If you like your plan you can't keep it, and you may not even be able to replace it.
When a reporter asked Carney if it was time to declare “mission accomplished,” Carney replied, “Using that phrase is not one I would employ.” This just in! And all it took was $1 billion – before the fixes.
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