By Carla K. Johnson
Anticipating heavy traffic on the government’s health-care website, the Obama administration extended yesterday’s deadline for signing up for insurance by a day, giving Americans in 36 states more time to select a plan.
It was the latest in a series of pushed-back deadlines and delays that have marked the rollout of the health-care law.
Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the federal agency in charge of the overhaul, said the grace period — which runs through today — was being offered to accommodate people from different time zones and to allow for any technical problems that might result from a last-minute rush of applicants.
The HealthCare.gov site had a disastrous, glitch-prone debut in October but has gone through extensive improvements to make it more reliable and increase its capacity. The administration said the system was running well yesterday.
Officials said the website received 1.2 million visits over the weekend and had surpassed 1 million additional visits by late yesterday afternoon. They said a call center took 200,000 calls from those seeking insurance under the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.
Bataille said the system was handling the volume with error rates of less than 1 in 200 and response times of less than one second.
Yesterday had been the deadline for Americans in the 36 states, including Ohio, served by the federal site to sign up if they wanted coverage to begin at the start of the new year. The remaining states operate their own online marketplaces, and some of them have extended their deadlines.
The Obama administration is hoping for a surge of year-end enrollments to show that the technical problems were a temporary setback. That also would go a long way toward easing concerns that insurance companies won’t be able to sign up enough young, healthy people to keep prices low for everyone.
But the grace period might have been a tacit acknowledgement that the website remains vulnerable to heavy traffic. What’s more, the delay offered critics of Obamacare another opportunity to argue that the law still isn’t working and that President Barack Obama keeps changing the rules.
The administration did not characterize today as a new deadline or an extension, likening the move to the Election Day practice in which people who are in line when the polls close are still allowed to vote.
Roger Colyn, 60, of Des Moines, Iowa, was happy when he left his appointment yesterday afternoon with a state enrollment navigator. She helped him sign up for a "silver" plan that will cost him $10.79 in monthly premiums after government aid is factored in.
"I feel relieved," Colyn said.
Others said they will let the date pass without deciding.
"I’m in no hurry, though it’d be nice to be able to visit a doctor without stress," said Kyle Eichenberger, an uninsured 34-year-old from Oak Park, Ill., who said he encountered problems on the website when he first tried to enroll early on.
"I’m an Obamacare supporter, though I think it is full of problems," Eichenberger said. "I’d like to see the whole system streamlined to be more user-friendly. Keep the basic idea, but don’t make me feel like I’m navigating a maze to get a simple checkup."
The government’s original deadline already had been pushed back a week because of the website problems. The extra day will add to the already-daunting administrative problems that insurance companies face, such as inaccuracies on applications, industry consultant Robert Laszewski said.
"Insurers would like to have two to three weeks to process applications. Now they’re going to have a week, less one more day," he said. "When the day is done, it doesn’t help."
Obama said on Friday that more than 1 million had enrolled for coverage since Oct. 1. The administration’s estimates call for 3.3 million to sign up by Dec. 31, and the target is 7 million by the end of March. After that, people who fail to buy coverage can face tax penalties.
Minnesota, one of the states running its own insurance exchange, extended its deadline from yesterday to Dec. 31 amid problems with its website and extra-long hold times to reach its help center. Maryland pushed back its cutoff date to Dec. 27. New York extended its deadline to midnight tonight.
Nevada stuck to yesterday’s deadline, and enrollment counselors reported a surge of interest.
Source: Associated Press
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