With all the problems facing the rollout of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, nowhere is the situation worse or more surprising than in Oregon, a progressive state that has enthusiastically embraced the federal law but has so far failed to enroll a single person in coverage through the state's insurance exchange.
Despite grand ambitions, an early start, millions of dollars from the federal government and a tech-savvy population, Oregon's online enrollment system still isn't ready more than a month after it was supposed to go live. The state has resorted to hiring or reassigning 400 people to process insurance applications by hand.
"We're all surprised and frustrated that we're in the position that we're in now," said Jesse O'Brien, a health care advocate at the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group, which lobbied for the exchange.Remember: the federal government is only reporting how many have "put something in their shopping cart." Putting something in one's shopping cart is not the same as paying for it/buying it.
The bad news: Oregon has its own enrollment site. The Oregon site is in worse shape than the federal government's enrollment site. The federal government's enrollment site is in such bad shape, the government now considers an "80% success" of access as "smoothly operating" and "fixed"; previously reported. For the 20% of Americans who will never be able to access the federal website, the administration is now working with insurers to find ways around the on-line exchange: like telephone calling, pencil, and paper.
We're not "some banana republic" -- President Obama, September 20, 2013. No, the banana republics are actually getting things done.
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