106,856. That is the number of people who successfully selected—not bought—a new healthcare plan this past October under the Obama administration’s legislation often referred to as ‘Obamacare.’ The program’s official name is the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a moniker that now seems ironic, given recent struggles.
A mere 27,000 people dove into the behemoth website that is healthcare.gov and emerged having successfully selected a plan. For those in need of a refresher, healthcare.gov is the federal government’s version of a highly touted new-age online marketplace; the particulars of the ACA were centered on the assumption of its functionality. In Maine, a state that opted to use the federal government’s website, only 271 people selected a plan by the end of the month.
As kindly noted by Rep. Steve Stockman of Texas, more people caught chlamydia last month than selected a plan under Obamacare. He also noted that more people followed Nickelback on Twitter, and bought Yoko Ono’s first album than selected a plan.
Mr. Stockman’s diverse interests aside, his numbers made me feel somewhat guilty—I started to think that I should have supported my President and tried to sign up by now. But then I realized I already had insurance. And to protect my manhood, I should tell you that I never get sick anyway.
Yet, lots of people do seem to get sick, and somewhat regularly too. Theoretically, October 1 should have been the Christmas Day these people always wanted (but never got because they still had the flu).
The design of the website certainly isn’t helping its cause. It really stinks, and its issues seem less forgivable, given that McKinsey & Co., a consulting firm, predicted the website’s massive problems as far back as last April. The firm, it turns out, was correct in their prediction that two weeks of testing might not be enough time to troubleshoot the problems that could occur when thousands of people try to log on.
One can’t fault the website for not trying to look pretty in the meantime though. It appears almost like a cartoon, where the backdrop is pretty clearly a facade to hide the desolation and destruction behind the walls. On the website, though, it’s the smiling, matronly faces and bright colors that belie the tragedy within. Even the homepage hints at the cracks in the wall; the slick banner along the top notes the website’s daily closure from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. for renovations.
To its credit, the administration is still trying. Recently, they called for more 18 to 34-year-old males to sign up, as the octogenarians of America apparently haven’t needed much help navigating the website. They may also need young people to help offset costs of said octagenarians, but they don’t seem keen to advertise that point quite as much.
Of course, if they’re really trying to attract young males, they’re going about it all wrong. Between the inconvenient late-night closing hours, and the clearly accentuated ‘apply for insurance by phone’ button, it’s a small wonder the young guys of America have been too lazy to buy the insurance.
The paltry number of October applicants shows that the signup problems stem from more than a lack of healthy young males itching to go to the doctor’s office. In a country of 313 million people, somehow only 100,000 selected a plan last October. Given that roughly 50 million Americans still need insurance, we should be laughing at this number.
The Obama administration must fix the website’s problems immediately. That should be a given. But the administration should take away a larger lesson from this situation: be careful with technology. We live in a technology-obsessed age, and everyone wants to incorporate fancy new gadgets into their operations. Oftentimes, this goes extremely well, but it can’t be forced.
Liberals love to compare the Obamacare rollout to George Bush’s 2005 Medicare part D rollout (which also faced massive online implementation difficulties), as if one failure excuses another. While Medicare part D eventually did improve—as will healthcare.gov—the lesson shouldn’t be that this is okay, because it’s not.
If the Obama administration had more thoroughly analyzed this problem, they would have understood the need for a stronger backup system—paper isn’t the end of the world. The consultants’ report should have made this clear, but the administration blatantly ignored the facts because they seemed to be mesmerized by technology; it is conveniently easy to forget that it often doesn’t work.
The age of technology can and will be powerful, but we cannot totally abandon what we know and rely on. As tempting as it may be, technology certainly isn’t perfect and we need to stop pretending it is. The step back in time—to paper, phone or whatever other ancient technology—may not be pretty, but it can make us healthier in the end.