President Obama will speak Monday to acknowledge a new potential political disaster — the glitch-laden federal health care exchanges.
Administration officials have no time to waste as they race to find a prescription to heal the sickly exchanges while Republicans, battered by the government shutdown debacle, quickly gear up to tout troubles with the Obamacare rollout.
“The President will directly address the technical problems with HealthCare.gov — troubles that he and his team find unacceptable,” a White House official said.
The remarks are part of an administration push to inject a new urgency into efforts to fix the site, which made its debut on Oct. 1 — the day the government was shut down as the Republicans sought to defund the 2010 law.
The Health and Human Services Department, which oversees HealthCare.gov, announced over the weekend that it has hired experts from the private sector and other federal agencies to rewrite flawed computer code that has hampered the site and left most users unable to sign up for health insurance plans available under Obamacare.
With the new steps, the administration appeared to have decided to own up to the technical woes that it had initially downplayed.
“There’s no one more frustrated than the President at the difficulty in the website,” Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
In New York, one of only 16 states that has its own exchange, not one person had succeeded in using the site to enroll in a plan as of Friday.
Donna Frescatore, director of the New York State of Health marketplace, said Friday that 134,000 people had registered and shopped on the state’s online health care site since its Oct. 1 launch, and thousands signed up to enroll in a plan.
Via: NYDN
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