No shocker here. It looks as if up to a half-million Americans will get extensions to sign up for Obamacare.
But it also looks like the process went relatively smooth. The deadline for the latest round of the Affordable Care Act was midnight Sunday. But a computer glitch mid-Saturday threw some sign ups into flux. It was fixed and then on Sunday about 80,000 visitors hit Healthcare.gov got while another 250,000 dialed up the Obamacare call center, according to USA Today.
When it’s all said and done, Obamacare looks like it remains on a B+ trajectory for execution. They’ll sign up more than 9 million, which was the administration’s target. But the government probably won’t hit the 12 million estimated by the Congressional Budget Office. Rates of uninsured are dropping all over the country – even in anti-Obamacare states – but ACA is still not signing up younger Americans and minorities at necessary rates.
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
In a webinar on April 16 at 1pm ET, Aneesh Chopra will moderate a discussion with executives from DocuSign, Velatura, and behavioral health providers on eConsent, health information exchange and compliance with the CMS Final Rule on interoperability.
Plus, the web site is better (this year’s applicants clicked through 16 screens compared to 76 last year) and there were fewer funny videos.
This is largely process work, of course. Obamacare as a policy and as something we can even count on to exist in three years has a lot more issues.
- You have critics on the left and right complaining it is too complicated and, as a result, unworkable in the long term without at least some notable tweaks
- The latest Supreme Court challenge is looming (though it could implode)
- The GOP alternative to Obamacare is now lurking around
- Nothing seems to stop endless Obamacare repeal vote
Not the most stable environment for healthcare innovators to trust. But let’s hope the essence of Obamacare remains while the changes, tweaks and improvements keep on coming.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
[Photo from Flickr user Philo Nordlund]
