WaPo: Beneath health law’s botched rollout is basic benefit for millions of uninsured Americans

[spanone]

Adam Peterson’s life is about to change. For the first time in years, he is planning to do things he could not have imagined. He intends to have surgery to remove his gallbladder, an operation he needs to avoid another trip to the emergency room. And he’s looking forward to running a marathon in mid-January along the California coast without constant anxiety about what might happen if he gets injured.

These plans are possible, says Peterson, who turned 50 this year and co-manages a financial services firm in Champaign, Ill., because of a piece of plastic the size of a credit card that arrived in the mail the other day: a health insurance card.

Peterson is among the millions of uninsured Americans who are benefiting from the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law that launched far-reaching changes to the U.S. health-care system and is President Obama’s premier domestic achievement.

These beneficiaries have not been oblivious to the problems of the new insurance exchanges, including a rollout so botched that Obama called it his biggest mistake of the year. Many, including Peterson, had firsthand encounters with the error-prone federal Web site, HealthCare.gov, that tested their patience and resolve. Some called help lines that couldn’t help them. Others drove long distances to meet with trained enrollment workers who couldn’t get them enrolled. Yet they persisted.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/beneath-health-laws-botched-rollout-is-basic-benefit-for-millions-of-uninsured-americans/2013/12/28/8ae8d93e-68e5-11e3-8b5b-a77187b716a3_story.html?hpid=z3

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. In spite of the problems, what is happening is REVOLUTIONARY.

[spanone]

2. yes ma'am it is

[BlueStreak]

4. Since Ovctober 20, 95% of the "problems" were media hallucinations

What has been happening since that time is that MILLIONS of people have been repeating this story. The media still can't bring itself to just talk about the important story. Virtually every report about health care has an obligatory opening that talks about the failed website and horrible rollout. I guess we should be happy that at least a few of these reports talk about what is ACTUALLY happening out there.

[Enthusiast]

5. Revolutionary for this nation.

Yes.

[Cha]

3. Thing with the "botched" roll out is

the Obama Admin learned from the mistakes.. fixed them and moved FORWARD!

Unlike the gop that keeps making the same damn mistakes over and over again and expects a different result.

thanks spanone. Persistence!

[SleeplessinSoCal]

6. So true Cha.

Word of mouth is now going to be revolutionary and the best medicine for a botched website roll out.

[Lordquinton]

7. If the website performance was his "Biggest mistake"

then he's doing unbelievably well.

Still can't believe a website not working 100% perfectly on launch day is even worth more than a day's story. It pretty much standard that opening day websites will go down. Maybe they should give Target this kind of scrutiny, after all their computer problem actually impacts millions of Americans in very dangerous ways, instead of merely inconveniencing people for a week before it got smoothed out.