The Administration is reporting that some 476,000 applications have been filed under the Affordable Care Act through the Federal and state health care insurance sites. The states that have set up health insurance exchanges (Kentucky, New York, California, Oregon, etc.) have had far better success than the Federal site, "HealthCare.gov," which is experiencing major problems in the roll-out phase. Also, the number of applications don't correlate to the number of enrollments, and there are real problems cropping up with the data that insurance companies are receiving from the Fed site in order to write new policies.
The Administration had three years to get the Federal site up and running. We have seen reports that the system wasn't tested until several weeks before the unveiling, and that it was not designed to deal with anywhere near the number of "hits" that were recorded in the first few days. The great Ezra Klein has a good summation of the screw-up. The President is rightfully upset that his signature program's roll-out was botched so badly. The top officials responsible should be tendering their resignations, and for those that don't, they should be fired.
UPDATE: The President is expected to address the problems with the roll-out Monday morning in a televised news conference. Here's a recap.
UPDATE II: Maybe this guy could fix the website...(haha)
