SPIN: Barack Obama, 10/1/2013: “Now, like every new law, every new product rollout, there are going to be some glitches in the signup process… there have been times this morning where the site has been running more slowly than it normally will. The reason is because more than one million people visited healthcare.gov before 7:00 in the morning… Thank you, Kathleen Sebelius, for the outstanding work.”
FACT: Healthcare.gov War Room, 10/2/2012 AM Report: “On-going issues: High capacity on the website, direct enrollment not working, VA system not connecting, Experian creating confusion with credit check information, residency issue has a script deing developed for the 900 issues that occurred, and many agent-bookers have not signed up on EIDM.”
SPIN: Jay Carney, 10/1/2013: “Republicans are worried that beginning today, it’s not about opposing President Obama when it comes to this fight over the Affordable Care Act, it’s about opposing the millions of Americans who are benefiting… So we take this, as Bill Clinton used to say, as a high-class problem. It’s an indication of the absolute interest out there around the country.”
FACT: Healthcare.gov War Room, 10/2/2012 AM Report: “6 enrollments have occurred so far with 5 different issuers.”
SPIN: Jay Carney, 10/2/2013: “So as I said yesterday, it’s a first-class problem. There’s no question that the volume was so high and continues to be so high that that has caused some delays, but it is related to — those delays are, in our view, related to the high volume… we have an extremely competent team that developed a very user-friendly website.”
FACT: Healthcare.gov War Room, 10/2/2012 PM Report: “Approximately 100 enrollments have happened as of this meeting…Ongoing issues: Experian identity-proofing issue for consumers. CMS Enterprise portal identity-proofing issue for agent-brokers. SADPs do not have etimated or guaranteed markets on Plan Compare. Fixes for the disappearing notices are being implemented. Fixes in the works for: the income issue, SSN. incarceration inconsistencies, and notices for eligibility for Medicaid/CHIP. EIDM servers may have software issue. Eligibility results are breaking intermittently. Issuers are not receiving 834s when they should be.”
SPIN: Barack Obama, 10/3/2013: “So I would think that if, in fact, this was going to be such a disaster that the Republicans say it’s going to be, that it was going to be so unpopular…nobody would show any interest, there would be, like, two people on the website — (laughter) — and everybody would then vote for candidates who want to repeal it.”
FACT: Healthcare.gov War Room, 10/3/2012 AM Report: “As of yesterday there were 248 enrollments.”
SPIN: Jay Carney, 10/3/2013: Q: No hard enrollment numbers? MR. CARNEY: “No, we don’t have that data.”
Spin v. Fact in the First Days of Healthcare.gov
