For Heaven’s Sake.
A few hours ago I posted this diary, celebrating the fact that 6 million people have already enrolled in ACA exchange policies via the federal exchange...and that, when you add in the state exchanges and the imminent auto-renewals, it’s very possible that the 2016 Open Enrollment Period may have already matched last year’s 11.7 million total (at the very least, the grand total should be within striking distance)...with 6 weeks left to go.
I figured that diary would get some buzz, and I guess it’s gotten some...but for the most part, it seems that Daily Kos, along with the rest of the progressive blogosphere and the Democratic Party apparatus in general has decided to freak the heck out over an admittedly ugly data breach incident.
With that in mind, of all the numbers thrown around at today’s CMS press conference, there’s one number in particular I’d like you to focus on:
600,000.
Six hundred thousand people actively enrolled in private healthcare policies on Tuesday, December 15, 2015 by using HealthCare.Gov.
Forget about the cumulative total for a moment. Forget about the auto-renewals still to be added. Forget about the state-based exchanges. Just focus on the fact that in a single 24-hour period, 600,000 people signed up through the federal exchange site alone.
Now think back to October 2013, when HC.gov and 17 state-based exchange websites launched...and, for the most part, immediately crashed and burned.
On October 1, 2013, only six people signed up through HealthCare.Gov.
Considering the years-long battle to pass the Affordable Care Act and the lengths to which Democrats went to protect it, the launch of President Obama's healthcare law was something of a disaster, marred mostly by the program's broken website. But now we know just how awful the enrollment numbers were from those first few days.
According to documents obtained by CBS News from the House Oversight Committee, just six people enrolled in the program using its website during the first 24 hours, despite the Obama administration's claims of 4.7 million unique visitors to the site over the same time period. And the second day wasn't much better: just 248 people were able to enroll nationwide.
Not six hundred thousand. Not six thousand. Not six hundred...six.
That means that as of Tuesday, HealthCare.Gov is literally operating 100,000 times better than it was just 26 months ago.
Put another way: In 2013, it took 67 days to enroll 600,000 people nationally...including all 17 state exchanges (Covered California, New York State of Health, kynect and so forth).
This year, HC.gov managed to enroll 600K by itself in a single day.
Given all the crap that the tech folks at HHS/CMS/HC.gov, as well as the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party in general took at the time over the technical mess (much of it justified, I agree), I just thought someone should mark this moment, that's all.
Go on about your business.
UPDATE: I’ve removed the profanity in the diary.
Also, I want to thank everyone for the Recs, as well as to apologize for being so harsh in my language. I’m pretty exhausted this week and a bit irritable today.
Also, I don’t mean to suggest that the Sanders/Clinton/DNC/NGP mess isn’t important as well; I was just surprised that in the heat of it, no one was paying attention to the other big, very positive story about a major Democratic issue/development.
As for my own thoughts about the Sanders/DNC brouhaha: I haven’t read all of the details yet (and more seem to be popping up every minute), but my general sense is this:
1. The Sanders campaign (not Bernie himself, but some of his top people) screwed up royally here and got busted doing so. 2. The response from the DNC appears to have been justified...but just barely, and Wasserman Schultz appears to have handled it in an incredibly ham-handed fashion, using brute tactics when the situation called for a delicate touch. This was made worse by the strong evidence that DWS was already pulling strings heavily in Hillary’s favor, which she has no business doing. 3. Having said that, one doesn’t justify the other. As someone on Twitter noted, it’s entirely possible for Bernie’s people to screw up big time and for DWS to be utterly in the bag for Hillary simultaneously. 4. It looks as though some late-night discussions have resolved the biggest point of contention here anyway. Apparently Sanders has given the DNC the info they asked for, and the DNC has agreed to restore Sanders voter file data.