Yesterday during the daily White House press briefing, Jay Carney couldn't tell reporters whether people who have enrolled in Obamacare will actually be covered with Obamacare health insurance on January 1, just 28 short days away.
"We're telling consumers if they're not sure if they're enrolled they should call the insurer directly," Carney said.
Today, new numbers show a third of people who have "enrolled" in Obamacare think they have health insurance, but in reality thanks to a broken enrollment system, aren't actually covered and won't have insurance on January 1. More from the Washington Post:
The enrollment records for a significant portion of the Americans who have chosen health plans through the online federal insurance marketplace contain errors — generated by the computer system — that mean they might not get the coverage they’re expecting next month.
The errors cumulatively have affected roughly one-third of the people who have signed up for health plans since Oct. 1, according to two government and health-care industry officials. The White House disputed the figure but declined to provide its own.
According to a government official with knowledge of the federal exchange, an internal report Monday showed that nearly 149,000 individuals have completed the enrollment process through the new online system.
Insurers have been fretting about the problems involving the enrollment records for weeks, both publicly and in private conversations with the White House. The figures provided to The Washington Post suggesting that a variety of errors affect at least one-third of all enrollments so far are the first public indication of the magnitude of the problem.
The errors, if not corrected, mean that tens of thousands of consumers are at risk of not having coverage when the insurance goes into effect Jan. 1, because the health plans they picked do not yet have accurate information needed to send them a bill. Under the 2010 law designed to reshape the health-care system, consumers are not considered to have coverage unless they have paid at least the first monthly insurance premium.
The White House is touting an improved website, but insurers are reporting that data and personal information from Obamacare enrollees is being jumbled before it gets to them and therefore, people who have signed up, don't necessarily have health insurance coverage.
Here's how this thing is going to play out. People who enrolled in the Obamacare exchanges are going to go to the doctor after January 1 and discover in the waiting room that although they signed up for coverage, they aren't insured. Multiply this situation by thousands of people and the Obama administration not only has an insurance crisis on their hands, but another credibility nightmare.
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