President Obama rightly acknowledged on Monday that there is "no excuse" for the horrendously botched opening of the federal Web site consumers are supposed to use to sign up for health insurance policies under the Affordable Care Act. Unless the problems can be fixed soon, they threaten to undermine the ability of the health care exchanges to help enroll some seven million uninsured Americans in 2014.
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The administration created the Web site so the buck necessarily stops with high officials — Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, and President Obama himself — who allowed this to happen. The administration attributes the problems partly to unexpectedly high demand from people eager to compare insurance policies available in their states and partly to technical glitches that blocked or slowed people from submitting applications and erroneous data being sent to insurers. Why the administration failed to anticipate the high demand has never been explained. Nor has it clearly explained the nature of the technical problems — or who in government or among the private contractors is primarily responsible for them.
The problems with the site have frustrated millions of people trying to get information and coverage. In response, the administration has put forward a two-part approach to coping with Web site failures. It has added information technology experts from inside and outside the government to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week to try to overcome the technical glitches. Second, it has expanded and publicized alternative ways to find out about health plans and costs — like increased staffing at call centers that will help people enroll by phone at all hours of day and night, counselors (called navigators) in each state who will help people enroll in person, and applications that can be downloaded and mailed in.
Mr. Obama also made this important pledge to all consumers who tried to apply through the federal Web site and got stuck somewhere in the process: "In the coming weeks, we will contact you directly, personally" to recommend how to complete the application, shop for coverage and pick a suitable plan.
It's now up to his office to make good on these promises, and there is no reason to believe it can't be done. The health exchanges in several states appear to be working better than the federal site. And even with the federal site's problems, some half-million Americans have successfully submitted applications through state and federal exchanges, the first step in the enrollment process.
Many Congressional Republicans are eager to exploit the start-up problems as evidence that health care reform is doomed to failure and ought to be delayed. They ignore the fact that Republican-led states contributed to the start-up problems by refusing to set up their own exchanges and dumping the task on the federal government.
Even so, carrying out the law and making the technology work is the responsibility of the administration — as are the swift repairs required to ensure that millions can actually sign up for the coverage they need.
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