Sneaking in another delay

November 27, 2013
Drafts

If you’re dependent on the major networks for your news, you would have missed today’s under-the radar announcement of a one-year delay in the implementation of the small business mandate.  From politico:

The Obama administration today announced a one year delay of online enrollment for small businesses looking to purchase health coverage through federal Obamacare exchanges, another high-profile setback for HealthCare.gov.

It’s the second delay for online small business enrollment, which the administration had said would begin this month….

The delay of the small business exchanges comes as little surprise, as the administration had said earlier this week it would offer alternative ways for small businesses to enroll. Still, it undercuts the White House message that it’s beginning to turn around the disastrous rollout of the health care law.
The Washington Post online blog site also reported on the delay, adding “The Obama administration is aiming to double HealthCare.gov’s capacity by Sunday, increasing it from 25,000 concurrent users up to 50,000 shoppers using the Web portal at once. Bataille said it was “on track” to hit that metric by Dec. 1.
Let that sink in a minute.  50,000 “shoppers.”
Each article also notes that these delays are building in time for “new and improved!” features.  Is it possible that the White House is desperately hoping that these will be offered as the reason for “this site is temporarily down while we improve our service to YOU”  minor delays?  Who knows.  But it doesn’t seem to be working.
Surprisingly, Huffington Post picked this up as well, surprisingly.
NBC and ABC have seen fit to not cover it; CBS has it tucked away down deep on their website, CNN embedded it in their article “Small Firms can’t use Obamacare site,” a headline that links to an article about the cautious unveiling of the updated website:  “White House: Enroll in Obamacare, but not too fast.”  Because that’s the problem.cnn obamacareFrom CNN:

“In the latest problem with the website, it will be unable to enroll small businesses online for another year, [Julie] Bataille,[ spokeswoman for the federal unit in charge of administering the rollout of the health care reforms] told reporters on a conference call.

Small businesses can enroll in other ways in the special small business system known as SHOP, but problems with HealthCare.gov have prevented their online enrollment so far. It was the third delay of the SHOP Marketplace component of the website, this time until November 2014.

Some actual reporting, even if it was tucked away.  (Although I am thrilled at the lead article. Truly a great story.)

Meanwhile, we are still dealing with people who honestly believe that Obamacare is merely a law that says everyone has to have health insurance.

Imagine honest journalism.
Then help us fight for it