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1,285 days. 30,840 hours. 1,850,400 minutes (and counting). That’s how long the Obama Administration has had to implement Obamacare since it was signed into law. Yet the Wall Street Journal reports this morning that not only will Obamacare’s small business exchange not be ready in time for open enrollment on Tuesday, the individual health exchanges may not be either:
The Obama administration acknowledged for the first time Thursday that a technological problem is forcing it to delay part of the rollout of the new health-care law, saying insurance exchanges won’t be ready to accept online applications from small businesses when the program launches Tuesday.
With less than five days left to debug the sprawling new computer system, there are other signs of trouble: People close to the situation are also skeptical the online marketplaces for individual customers will be fully ready….
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the software supporting exchanges for individual consumers that the federal government is running on behalf of 36 states was miscalculating U.S. subsidies for low-income people. Problems with that software continued Thursday, according to people familiar with the individual marketplaces.
In addition to calculation problems, a portion of the software that determines eligibility for people signing up for coverage was making inaccurate determinations in test cases Thursday, one person familiar with the situation said.
The Administration has had nearly two million minutes to implement this law. It hasn’t worked—and it won’t work. The message is clear:
