A quiet first day of insurance coverage for millions of Americans was a big victory for the Affordable Care Act.
Millions of Americans woke up on January 1, 2014 with health insurance they got through federal and state insurance exchanges thanks to the Affordable Care Act.
The relatively quiet first day is a welcome contrast to three months ago, when massive problems with Healthcare.gov, the online portal to the health insurance exchanges, threatened the law’s future and President Obama’s legacy. Officials touted improvements to the site as a reason for the drastic increase in enrollments for the month of December – 2.1 million through December 28 – but they also acknowledged that some people who signed up could have problems.
Phil Schiliro, the White House health policy adviser, said on msnbc Tuesday that anyone who signed up for coverage who did have trouble with new insurance should call the HealthCare.gov help line to straighten out any issues. “If anyone is having problems tomorrow, if they go to a pharmacy, if they go to a hospital and there’s no record, they should call that number; the insurer could call that number; and we’ll be able to determine in five minutes whether or not they properly enrolled,” he said.
Of the 2 million people who signed up for private insurance coverage and the 4 million who signed up for Medicaid, only 7,000 people called a special hotline set up to help those who were unable to sign up for insurance by December 24th, the deadline to get coverage starting January 1.
“The new law is transformational for our entire health care system, and for millions of Americans who finally have health security,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said when announcing the numbers.
A massive enrollment surge in December - 1.1 million through the 24 - still left the admistration far short of an initial goal of 7 million by the end of open enrollment in March 2014, a figure cited by Sebelius in September. Schliro downplayed that number and redirected focus to the one million figure. He said, “There’s no magic to the seven million.”
Even as Obama and his advisers have pushed back against attempts to undermine the law, opponents of the law got a reprieve from one of the provisions hours before it was to go into effect. On Tuesday night, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor granted a stay of the ACA’s birth control mandate at the request of several Catholic non-profit groups. The Supreme Court is set to consider a legal challenge to the law by Hobby Lobby, a for-profit company that is also arguing that the mandate violates religious freedoms.
Sotomayor asked the government to respond by Friday. After that, Sotomayor or the full court
