Look, I know a lot of people don't want to discuss the problems of the ACA [View all]

[cali]

but ignoring those problems and going with the line "it's just the website", is silly.

It's an important issue.

I strongly support the ACA and I fervently hope that the problems plaguing it will get ironed out, but I'm concerned. Yeah, concerned, so go ahead label me as a "concern troll". That won't change a thing.

this morning I heard an interview with an Alaskan woman who is one of 36 people in Alaska who have signed up for insurance via the government website. she's a former web designer. It was an interesting interview. She was pleasantly surprised by the prices but she had a hell of a time using the website.

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Imler's degree is in computer programming, and she's even built a few websites. She thinks that experience helped her persevere through the trouble spots on HealthCare.gov.

"You get to a point where you finally get to pick what health insurance you want and all the buttons have to be double-clicked. If you don't know that or try that, it doesn't go anywhere. It just sits there," says Imler. "This website is so not user-friendly. You can't figure out what they're trying to get you to do, unless you accidentally get there."

About two hours after she started, she landed on a screen that told her she had successfully enrolled. She was pleasantly surprised by the price. Imler qualified for subsidies and chose a mid-level plan that will cost her $110 a month.

"The website sucks. I'm not going to lie," she says, "But the idea that I might be able to afford health insurance, is huge to me. It will be a huge burden off my family."

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http://www.ideastream.org/news/npr/243748519

I think there's a window within which the administration pretty much MUST get the website functioning fairly smoothly. Despite the "oh, it's just the website" perspective, it's VITAL that the website work well. It's the chief point of access for people.

John Cassidy of the New Yorker wrote an interesting and thoughtful piece yesterday:

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In short, it’s a mess—a fact some voices normally supportive of Obama are acknowledging. In a cover story for Business Week entitled “How the iPod President Crashed,” the columnist and blogger Ezra Klein argued that “the disastrous launch of healthcare.gov…has dealt a devastating blow to Obama’s vision” of healthcare transformed, and to the broader notion of activist government. Like Medicare Part D, Klein noted, the A.C.A. could “emerge from a troubled launch to become a wildly successful program. But reviving the idea that government can do big things right will be harder.”

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Perhaps the most damaging charge against Obama is that he didn’t express more interest in the building and testing of healthcare.gov, which, once so many Republican-run states declined to run their own sites, was always going to be the public face of an enormous new government program bearing his name. When well-run corporations make “bet the company” investments on a new product or acquisition, their C.E.O. is usually there to supervise and lead. Even if the C.E.O. stays at HQ, he or she will demand daily briefings and updates. For the Obama Administration, rolling out the A.C.A. was the political equivalent of a bet-the-company investment. But, as far as we can tell, making sure the new Web site was constructed in time and worked properly was, for the most part, left to a largely anonymous, and doubtless overworked, bureaucrat at the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services, Henry Chao.

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The true test of the A.C.A. will come when healthcare.gov and the state-run Web sites are up and running properly. As I’ve said previously, I think the new exchanges, and particularly the generous new subsidies that are available on them, will eventually prove very popular, and Obamacare be a success on its own terms: i.e., it will substantially reduce the number of uninsured.

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The key to success is to get all the different parts of the A.C.A. working together: the mandates, the exchanges, and the new regulations for insurers. So far, of course, this is precisely what hasn’t happened. The employer mandate has been put back; the national exchange has proved a dud, and its failings are affecting some of the state exchanges, which need to get information from the federal government; the new regulations, which set minimum standards for all insurance policies, are causing some sticker shock. And with the reform stalled, so is the big promotional campaign that was supposed to persuade young people to sign up.

Obviously, much depends on the efforts of Zients and the team of whizzes he has recruited for his “tech surge.” If they can get healthcare.gov working properly on the timetable they have laid down, this will probably prove to be a crisis that Obama can rebound from—something like the budget crisis of 2011. The number of people enrolled on the exchanges will rise sharply, reporters will find some people who are happy with their new policies, and the news cycle will move on. If, however, the technical problems persist into December and the new year, the A.C.A. saga will take on some aspects of the scandals that did so much damage to previous two-term presidents. There will be more congressional hearings and damaging news stories; the internal recriminations will begin; and Obama’s approval rating will continue to slide.

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http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/11/the-politics-of-obama-and-obamacare.html