Another sluggish sign-up season for HealthCare.gov

As during much of the 2014 enrollment period, the HealthCare.gov website was plagued by another major glitch over the weekend as the 2015 signup window drew to a close.

By some estimates, as many as half a million people couldn’t complete the online application, forcing the administration to extend the signup deadline.

Obamacare enrollment was going smoothly until the final hours. Then it hit a snag. The problem, apparently, was the income verification component of the HealthCare.gov website. It interacts with the massive IRS database to determine whether an applicant is eligible for a subsidy and, if so, how much.

Joe Antos of the American Enterprise Institute said the website’s problems began when the 2,400-page law was written and then implemented with 20,000 pages of regulations: “The law’s too complicated and that means that the programming requirements are too complicated.”

The glitch that stalled enrollment over the weekend has reportedly been fixed, but Antos said the problems won’t end there. Assuming HealthCare.gov is now able to access the IRS database, it’s probably using 2013 income data to process 2015 applications.

“Those people who guess wrong and guessed that their income was lower than it turned out to be will end up having to pay some of that subsidy back, and that could be thousands of dollars,” Antos said. The federal government has reportedly spent 2.2 billion dollars on the HealthCare.gov website, and will spend more in the years to come.

Betsy McCaughey, author of several books on the healthcare law, said the media coverage leading up to Obamacare’s enrollment deadline loses sight of the big picture.

“We used to be able to choose whether we wanted to buy health insurance. We used to be able to choose what kind of health insurance we wanted, and we used to be able to choose when we purchased it. Now it’s a one-size-fits-all package designed by Washington, D.C., and there’s only a short time of the year called the open enrollment period,” McCaughey said. “This is like a law that says the only car you can buy is a four door sedan, no hatchbacks, no convertibles, and you can only buy it in January.”

With only 90 days in the initial enrollment period, the Obama administration pulled out all the stops to encourage Americans to sign up. A faith-based initiative provided churches with talking points and church bulletin inserts that pastors could use to encourage enrollment from the pulpit. Last enrollment period, the District of Columbia exchange presented a slogan to churches, “the body is a temple and it must be insured,” based on 1 Corinthians 6 :19.

“I don’t believe that I saw that in any of the scriptures,” Antos said. “Indeed, I don’t think health insurance existed that far back.”

Much of the media barrage during open enrollment was aimed at young adults.

“If Obamacare were a bargain, they wouldn’t have to do this,” McCaughey said. “But the fact is that the deductibles are so high, three or four or five times as high as what people encounter with on-the-job coverage that young people are concluding this is really a bad deal.”

Listen to Jim Henry’s report on Obamacare on The World and Everything in It.