President Barack Obama on Monday said the rollout of the new health care law has not been as smooth as he would have liked but says it’s vital for so many Americans.
Speaking form the Rose Garden the president was on damage control, a change of approach for the White House which has until now been largely quiet about what are serious systematic technical problems with the federal website healthcare.gov.
Since the roll out on October 1, residents in 36 states — not including New York — have been faced with major login problems, difficulty confusing error messages, and in some cases inability to sign up for coverage.
While criticizing the rollout, the president promised that these major issues are being fixed as we speak, trying instead to redirect focus to what he calls a good product for the American public.
“The product, the health insurance is good. The prices are good. It is a good deal. People don’t just want it. They’re showing up to buy it. Nobody’s madder than me that the website isn’t working as well as it should which means, it’s going to get fixed,” Obama said.
All that said, New Yorkers are not facing the same issues on the state-run site New York State of Health.
There were glitches in the first week or so, but the state has upped the capacity and things seem to be running smoothly.
As of Friday, 134,000 New Yorkers have signed up for coverage, many have already enrolled in plans, others are still shopping.
One complaint heard about the site is that unlike the federal website and other state-run sites like California, residents cannot window shop for plans without first signing up, meaning they have to go through several minutes of answering questions before getting a glimpse at the specific plans available.
You can though get a sense of how much you may pay for coverage through an online estimator. The state also has hundreds of navigators and customer service specialists to walk New Yorkers through the process.
Already the state say about 62,000 residents have sought help through the call center.
In order to get coverage January 1, residents must sign up for coverage by December 15.
http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=16119
via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
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