The Haunting of The Living Affected

Obama Addresses ACA's Website Woes

President Obama addressed concerns on Monday about the slow roll out of the healthcare.gov website implementing the Affordable Care Act marketplaces. In his speech he acknowledged the problems that some users have been experiencing, but stressed that the Affordable Care Act is “not just a website”, and that the benefits that have already taken effect for millions of Americans. For instance, young people already are able to stay covered by their parents’ plans until they are 26. According to President Obama, Seniors have saved billions of dollars thanks to deeper discounts on prescriptions. Preventive care like birth control has been made free through employer-provided insurance. And even for those experiencing trouble signing up in the marketplaces, the President emphasized that it is not a problem with the law, but with the “massive demand for it,” as the website has already been visited nearly 20 million times. He urged people to keep trying, assured them that they would still have months of the enrollment period to pick a plan, and reaffirmed that the problems are being fixed. With the shutdown over, however, Republicans have jumped on the website problems to criticize the Act. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R – KY) compared a visit to the website to a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles , suggesting that "it's time for the President to consider delaying this rushed effort." House Speaker John Boehner (R – OH) asserted that “the President doesn’t grasp the scale of the law’s failures.” Despite continued Republican objection to the law, two polls released this week found that people who have used the exchanges like them, that 46% of Americans approve of the law, and that even many of those who disapprove of the law still want to see it implemented. According to the poll by the Washington Post and ABC News, a full two-thirds of the country wants the Affordable Care Act to be implemented. In the meantime, AIDS United and many HIV/AIDS community organizations continue to suggest that people with HIV wait to enroll until more details about marketplace policies such as the coverage of needed anti-retroviral or other drugs or whether a person’s provider is in a policy’s network become available. For more information, see this blog post written by John Peller, Vice President of Policy at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, a member of our Public Policy Committee. There have been two new ACA-related developments this week. First, the Controlling Board of Ohio agreed to expand Ohio’s Medicaid program which will provide health coverage to over 275,000 low income people in the state. Ohio becomes the 25th state plus the District of Columbia to expand according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. In addition, the Obama administration announced Wednesday night that Americans would have an extra six weeks to sign up for health insurance through the new marketplaces before the mandate kicks in and they have to pay a penalty. This is unrelated, the administration says, to website problems, but is a grace period to clear up confusion. For Enrollment information contact The Living Affected Corporation at 501-379-8203 or click to www.livingaffected.org