Obama Blew Up the Health Care System. How Should the GOP Plan to Fix It? -- By Jim Geraghty, National Review

Ah! Great to get away for a few days, but good to be back. Let’s see, did anything get fixed about Obamacare while I was away?

How about that much-touted higher enrollment in the states?

About 49,100 people have enrolled in Obamacare plans through 12 state-run insurance exchanges, according to a consulting company that’s providing a hint on the data congressional Republicans sought during hearings in the past two weeks.

Enrollment through Nov. 10 represents 3 percent of the 1.4 million people projected to sign up in those states by the end of 2014, Washington-based Avalere Health said in a statement today. The data don’t include California, the most populous U.S. state, Massachusetts or Oregon. It also doesn’t account for those enrolled through the federal website serving 36 states.

Well, I’m sure that figure will jump when you include Oregon! Online enrollment is all the way up to… up to… er, well, zero.

In Oregon, officials defend their decision to not open for online enrollment, saying the website is producing inaccurate determinations on tax credits and other government assistance. The technical problems have prompted a massive push to enroll Oregonians by Dec. 15 using old-fashioned application forms. The small business portion of the Oregon exchange is also not functioning.

So far, the Oregon exchange has cost more than $140 million in federal grant money.

Okay, so we’re looking at 50,000, plus California and Massachusetts… and then those gobs and gobs of people who signed up through the federally-run sites, right?

Roughly 40,000 Americans have signed up for private insurance through the flawed federal online insurance marketplace since it opened six weeks ago, according to two people with access to the figures.

36 states, six weeks, 40,000 sign-ups.

So they aimed for 7 million in a six-month window, and after a month, they’re probably a bit past 90,000.  Suppose California and Massachusetts’ systems are working fantastic – best case scenario, we’re talking 125,000? 150,000?

....


Allow me to offer a separate idea: At some point, should Republicans push for a Constitutional Amendment declaring the federal government cannot require anyone to purchase a service or good as a condition of citizenship? Sure, John Roberts’ majority in the Supreme Court ruled the individual mandate was just another tax, but it’s good to lay down the marker that we are not little cogs to be hammered into place within the progressives’ grand machine.

Just how big a disaster could Obamacare turn into? Note that in a BusinessWeek cover piece, Erza Klein reminded us that the National Health Service in Great Britain spent $10 billion on a system for electronic medical records that “couldn’t be salvaged.”

 (Click link below to read more)
READ MORE Sphere: Related Content