Ezra Klein: Admin Has Done 'Terrible Job Launching' Obamacare

Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein “We are more than a week into the Affordable Care Act and most people going to that website cannot use it and cannot insurance, The Obama administration people failed the people it was trying to help, at least thus far. They need to get that site working before we can even talk about whether it can be a success.”

Host: What’s interesting though is the Affordable Care Act itself hasn’t necessarily risen in the esteem overall of the American people. you do have some people signing up, 8 million people visiting the website, so the concept of getting health care is still popular. What’s the threshold here? when do we know whether or not the Affordable Care Act is a success? Is it a year? Is it January 1? When do we start to judge it?

Klein: It will take a long time to judge it. I do want to say, because I don’t think people should beat around the bush on this. They have done a terrible job launching this law.

Host: Glitchy site.

Klein: It isn’t just a glitchy site. To a first approximation, basically nobody is capable of signing up for affordable health care right now or just any health insurance, affordable or not. That is not okay. They did a bad job running a very big program to help a lot of Americans. Now three weeks from now, four weeks from now, it might all be fixed. It might all be fine, and there’s something to that, right? A stat I heard the other day which I think is a stunning one is there were more people trying to sign up for accounts at healthcare.gov in the first 24 hours than Twitter had users signing up in the last 24 months. Nevertheless, when you launch something like this, it is on you to make it work. We are now more than a week into the Affordable Care Act and most people going to that website cannot use it and cannot get insurance. The Obama administration people failed the people it was trying to help, at least thus far. They need to get that site working before we can even talk about whether it can be a success. Right now it can’t even begin.