Former Obama senior adviser and ABC News contributor David Plouffe said on “This Week” Sunday that the Affordable Care Act will “work really well” when all states run their own health care exchanges and fully expand Medicaid – actions that may not be seen until President Obama is out of office in 2017.Video
“This program was designed to be implemented by the states. And in most of the states that are running their exchanges it’s going quite well,” Plouffe told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “You talked about Medicaid expansion. I think it’s just a fact, and it may take until 2017 when this president leaves office, you’re going to see almost every state in this country running their own exchanges eventually and expanding Medicaid. And I think it’ll work really well then.”
Work "really well" for whom? If Plouffe means the average (and shrinking) middle-class worker, he is out of his mind.
Website "Unstable" but Fixed for Vast Majority (Defined as 80%)
ABC News reports White House Declares Obamacare Website Fixed, But Problems Persist
Two months after the troubled launch of its signature health care initiative, the Obama administration on Sunday announced that its online insurance marketplace now functions smoothly for the “vast majority” of consumers seeking to shop for and enroll in coverage.Mike "Mish" Shedlock
Today “is not a magic moment but a process of continual improvement over time,” said Julie Bataille, communications director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which manages the website.
The report identifies as root causes of the problems ”hundreds of software bugs, insufficient hardware and infrastructure.” It says technical teams have implemented 400 fixes, with more than 300 coming online in the last three weeks.
“We now believe the HealthCare.gov site works for the vast majority of users,” Bataille said. The administration has defined “vast majority” as 80 percent of consumers looking to enroll online.
Still, significant problems persist with the system.
The report implies that the website continues to experience unscheduled outages at least 5 percent of the time, and officials signaled that there are still concerns about slow-downs during high traffic periods.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius advised consumers in a blog post Saturday to visit the site at off-peak times — mornings, nights and weekends — to avoid delays and potential congestion. Officials said today they are not yet ready to begin aggressively summoning people to the site until it’s demonstrated to be stable.
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