Obama vows website fixes for health law

President Barack Obama walks from the Oval Office to the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013, with Janice Baker, who runs a small business in Selbyville, Del., and was the first woman to enroll in the Delaware health care exchange, for an event on the initial rollout of the health care overhaul. Obama acknowledged that the widespread problems with his health care law's rollout are unacceptable, as the administration scrambles to fix the cascade of computer issues. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
President Barack Obama walks from the Oval Office to the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013, with Janice Baker, who runs a small business in Selbyville, Del., and was the first woman to enroll in the Delaware health care exchange, for an event on the initial rollout of the health care overhaul. Obama acknowledged that the widespread problems with his health care law's rollout are unacceptable, as the administration scrambles to fix the cascade of computer issues. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama said flaws in the government’s online insurance exchanges don’t indicate a broader failure of the program, as his spokesman suggested the administration is considering adjusting deadlines under the law.

Obama said the website that is central to getting as many as 7 million uninsured Americans covered under the 2010 health-care law hasn’t met expectations.

“Nobody’s madder than me about the fact that the website isn’t working as well as it should, which means it’s going to get fixed,” Obama said Monday at a White House Rose Garden event intended to emphasize the benefits for the uninsured, businesses and health-care providers under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

More problems came to light Monday, as the administration acknowledged that a planned upgrade to the website had been postponed indefinitely and that online Spanish-language signups would remain unavailable, despite a promise to Hispanic groups that the capability would start this week.

Obama, who emphasized the website’s simplicity in the weeks leading up to the insurance sign-ups, admitted there could now be “no sugarcoating” the problems.

“The website that’s supposed to make it easy to apply for and purchase the insurance is not working the way it should for everybody,” he said.

Obama’s remarks were the first time he addressed the law at length since last week’s end of a 16-day partial government shutdown that was triggered by a standoff over demands by some Republicans that the law be stripped of funding or delayed. The fiscal impasse overshadowed the technical flaws that have plagued the healthcare.gov website since it went live Oct. 1.

Obama said he expected congressional Republicans to use the slow rollout of exchanges to renew their attacks on the act. He said the issues are larger than the online signups, citing mandates in the law that benefit those who already have insurance, such as preventative-care coverage, and allowing young people to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26.

“The essence of the law, the health insurance that’s available to people, is working just fine,” Obama said. “We did not wage this long and contentious battle just around a website.”

Obama said everyone who seeks insurance through the exchanges will be able to get coverage and that enrollment by telephone or paper application is available.

House Speaker John Boehner said Obama is offering excuses instead of explanations.

“Either the president doesn’t grasp the scale of the law’s failures or he doesn’t believe Americans deserve straight answers,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said he will file legislation next week that would delay the individual mandate until six months after the signup website is certified as fully functional by the Government Accountability Office.

While enrollment for health plans under the law known as Obamacare continues until March 31, the cutoff to avoid the government’s tax penalty for not carrying coverage is Feb. 15 - the last day someone can enroll to have coverage effective the beginning of March.

White House press secretary Jay Carney, at a briefing after the Rose Garden event, indicated the White House may be considering some modifications to penalties people would otherwise face for failing to meet the law’s deadlines for carrying health insurance.

“There’s a disconnect between the two deadlines in the first year only,” Carney said. The Department of Health and Human Services will be issuing guidelines “soon,” he added.

Administration officials initially blamed heavy website traffic for the frozen computer screens that many people encountered when they first logged on. Since then, they have also acknowledged shortcomings with software and some elements of the system’s design, although the administration has yet to fully detail exactly what went wrong with the online system and who was responsible for the problems.

It appears the problems were well-known to some of those designing the system. One developer said that in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 1 launch, he and his colleagues huddled in conference rooms trying to patch deficiencies in computer code.

“It was an extremely tight deadline,” said the developer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was told not to talk to the media about his work.

One source of the troubles appears to be the testing procedures employed before the rollout. Several developers of the website told The Associated Press that they were worried for months about the system’s readiness and whether the software meant to link key computer systems was being properly put through its paces.

In addition, congressional investigators raised concerns before the rollout that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had taken on the job of testing the computer systems for the new markets during the final weeks before the signups opened. That job is often handled by specialized software companies.

The hobbled rollout has made Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius a target of the law’s critics. Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, from Sebelius’ home state of Kansas, has called for her resignation.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said in an emailed statement, “Somebody ought to be accountable for this mess, and if the president isn’t going to resign, it’s up to him to figure out who should.”

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has scheduled a Thursday hearing on the implementation problems. Sebelius has declined to testify, citing schedule conflicts, which Chairman Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, said was “wholly unacceptable.”

Health and Human Services spokesman Joanne Peters said Sebelius and other department officials plan to testify before Congress as early as next week.

“We have always indicated to the committee that she intended to testify but that she had a scheduling conflict,” Peters said in an emailed statement. “We continue to work with them to find a mutually agreeable date in the near future.”

The department said Sunday that it’s asking a group of the “best and brightest” technical experts from inside and outside the government to bring the site up to speed. A blog post Sunday on the department website promised a “tech surge” to fix the online portal.

About 8.6 million people visited the federal website in the first week, running into software flaws and long waits that prevented many from registering. At one point, the site posted error messages in at least 24 states. Independent, state-run exchange websites have seen far fewer waits and flaws.

The administration has said it will release enrollment figures from the federal website monthly, starting in mid-November. The six month period for signing up for insurance coverage ends March 31.

Information for this article was contributed by Margaret Talev, Alex Wayne, Richard Rubin, Julianna Goldman, Joe Sobczyk, Caitlin Webber, Derek Wallbank, Alex Nussbaum and Shannon Pettypiece of Bloomberg News; and by Jack Gillum, Julie Pace, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Luis Alonso and Laurie Kellman of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/22/2013

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