1. “You might want to avoid signing up right away.”
In the offices of certain government officials and health insurance companies, a ticking countdown to a specific date was posted on the walls for months: Oct. 1. That was the day of the official ribbon-cutting for the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act (commonly called Obamacare), when Americans began lining up for 2014 individual health insurance. But because the law’s future was uncertain until the Supreme Court upheld it in mid-2012, the exchanges had to scramble to get ready for opening day. Thirty-six states declined to set up their own exchanges for 2014 (each state has just one), so federal health officials had to do it instead — cramming years of work into a tight time frame. “Some people we’ve talked to will count it as a victory if the lights come on Oct. 1,” said Eric Johnson, a Columbia business professor and co-director of the university’s Center for the Decision Sciences, before the launch. (The small-business section of the exchanges in those 36 states won’t be able to accept online applications until November, the administration said, and some of the states running their own exchanges may also be running behind, having not yet announced when they will open to small employers.)
Indeed, grand-opening snafus ranged from jammed telephone lines and websites to technological glitches. “As much of a big deal as is made about [the launch] date, it is still a soft opening,” says Bill Melville, a market analyst for HealthLeaders-InterStudy, a research firm covering the exchanges. Lawmakers and even President Obama have acknowledged that the beginning has been more of a bumpy dress rehearsal, during which they’ve identified problems and deployed legions of software engineers to fix them.
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