Quote:

---

Bit by bit, the media narrative around the travails of Obamacare and its main enrollment vehicle, HealthCare.gov, is starting to look up. Or to put it more precisely, it is no longer so crushingly negative.

After weeks of stories about website crashes and canceled health plans, a competing story line is starting to emerge. Slowly but surely, people are navigating the exchanges and getting insurance – for some, cheaper and better than what they had. Last week, The New York Times and Los Angeles Times touted a “surge” in enrollment figures, especially in states that have their own exchanges.

This week, a Washington Post story described almost an Obamacare nirvana – people in rural Kentucky lining up and getting coverage, some for the first time in their lives.

Part of this wave of positive stories may be a media effect: Reporters (and the public) get tired of all the wall-to-wall negativity, and to keep interest up, seek out happy stories for a change of pace.

On Tuesday, the administration announced that seniors saved $8.9 billion on prescription drugs thanks to the ACA. Also, in a conference call with state and local elected officials, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius promised a “significantly different user experience” on HealthCare.gov by the end of the month.

The daily report Tuesday from Kaiser Health News (KHN) was noteworthy for its positive stories:

“Health law may offer part-time workers better options,” said one headline. The story talked about “mini-med” plans – low-cost, low-benefit plans that are no longer allowable under the ACA – and cited the case of a woman with a serious health problem who is likely to get better, subsidized coverage on the exchange.

Another piece reported on Californians happy to have their insurance policies canceled. Some people, the story reported, had felt trapped with subpar plans but had kept them because of preexisting medical conditions. Now, under the ACA, people with health problems cannot be denied coverage.

A story out of Philadelphia, highlighted websites that have been set up that allow people to calculate their health-care subsidy without going on HealthCare.gov – and if they’re not eligible, allow them to buy coverage directly from the site.

Getting HealthCare.gov fully functioning in time still sounds like a high-wire act. If there are more major stumbles, the bad headlines will come roaring back. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/1126/Is-Obamacare-on-the-
rebound-Media-turn-to-positive-stories.-video

---

Quote:

---

Obamacare Web Sign-Ups Reach 100,000 in Month

About 100,000 people signed up for health insurance through the online federal exchange last month, a roughly four-fold increase from October even as a team of U.S. government and contractor programmers was fixing the troubled Affordable Care Act website, said a person familiar with program’s progress.

The preliminary November numbers reflect individuals who successfully selected a plan. The administration expects that most consumers will sign up early next year as the enrollment period nears its March 31 close.

While far from the original goal, the jump in enrollment may be an encouraging trend for the administration and could signal that consumers are keeping an open mind about the new health law amid criticism from both Republicans and Democrats over the site’s technical failures.

Steady Increase

The person who provided the November enrollment figures, said the data points to a steady increase in sign-ups even before major website improvements were completed at the end of November.

Only 26,794 people signed up for private plans in the federal marketplace in October, while 79,391 enrolled through 14 states which, along with the District of Columbia, are running their own exchanges and websites. Most have experienced fewer technical problems. The federal website serves 36 states.

Error message rates for the front end are down to less than 1 percent per page from about 6 percent in October, the administration said in an assessment report yesterday. And after initially faltering with 1,100 users at a time, the site can now handle 50,000 at a time, or about 800,000 per day, according to the report. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-12-02/obamacare-web-sign-ups-rea
ch-100-000-in-month

---