TPM: Why The Administration Isn't Sweating Obamacare's Ugly First Week

[Lost-in-FL]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/why-the-administration-isn-t-sweating-obamacare-s-ugly-first-week

Read the headlines, and the first week of Obamacare's health insurance marketplaces has been hugely problematic, bordering on disastrous.

Long wait times on the Obamacare websites and crashing web pages. A dearth of consumers who have actually purchased insurance -- at least those who can be found by reporters. It's frankly hard to imagine a worse rollout for the law, from a public relations standpoint.

But the administration isn't sweating things yet. Neither is a veteran of health reform in Massachusetts, the only truly comparable experience to what Obamacare is going through this week.
"It is way too early. We didn't really start cranking until the individual mandate was real" a year after the Massachusetts marketplace went live, said Jonathan Gruber, a MIT professor who was on the ground in Massachusetts and advised the Obama administration while Obamacare was being drafted in 2009 and 2010.

"Really six weeks from now" is when the marketplaces need to be functioning properly, Gruber told TPM in an email. Dec. 15 is the last date that people can sign up for coverage and still have it start on Jan. 1, 2014. "The key enrollment starts in late November," Gruber said...

[PoliticAverse]

1. Consider October to be beta-test month... n/t