The website repair gives Democrats a badly needed psychological boost. Obamacare troubles remain

For House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra, the new, improved Obamacare website is better than it was — but the law won’t be a success “until every American who has a chance to qualify for these health insurance policies gets it.”

For Jeremy Milarsky, who works for one of the “navigator” groups in Missouri that’s helping people sign up, the website is improved enough to make the job easier, mainly because of a new health plan browser feature that actually works.


But for health insurers across the country, the new HealthCare.gov isn’t even close to a success — and won’t be until the Obama administration finishes the critical parts that aren’t even built yet.

( Understanding Obamacare: POLITICO’s guide to the ACA)

The fixes to the federal Obamacare enrollment website are holding up well enough — so far — that they mark a small but crucially important milestone in the rollout of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. For the first time since October, Democrats are ready to go on the offensive again, and advocates of the law are ready to start inviting people back. And Republicans are saying, hey, it was never all about the website anyway.

But the administration’s seeming success in bringing the website up to a basic level of competency is nowhere close to the kind of turnaround that would reboot the whole conversation — or make anyone ready to declare the Affordable Care Act a success.

Whole sections of the “back end” of the website, the part insurers deal with, remain unfinished. Democrats are now questioning the Obama administration about how it’s fixing the faulty enrollment records the website has been spitting out, to make sure people don’t find out they can’t use their new insurance after all.

And there are so many other real and potential problems — canceled policies, “sticker shock” and the possibility that people in certain situations won’t be able to keep their doctors — that Republicans have lots of ways to change the subject and keep the attacks coming.

The website repair won’t erase two months of lost time on the rollout. But it’s a big enough deal to give Democrats and other Obamacare supporters a badly needed psychological boost that two weeks ago seemed a longshot — and for many of them, that’s good enough.

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“I think it’s doing better, and that’s significant. But that doesn’t mean you can declare it a success,” said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.). “I just don’t think you can say it’s a success or a failure based on one day or event. It’s a moving target.”

The White House has been more mixed in its definitions of success. Obama sounded bullish at times when he hit the campaign trail for the law again on Tuesday. “The bottom line is this law is working and will work into the future,” he said, as he reminded his audience of popular benefits like coverage of pre-existing conditions, free preventive care and the end of lifetime limits on health benefits.

But he was also cautious about declaring the website totally fixed. “We’ve learned not to make wild promises about how perfectly smooth it’s going to be at all times,” Obama said. But he vowed that “we’re going to keep on working to fix whatever problems come up in any startup” — and he was confident enough to declare to Republicans that “we’re not going back.”

One of the most immediate problems the administration has to fix is the parts of the website that don’t even exist yet. The administration still has to build three critical “back end” pieces that insurers need. One is the part that handles “reconciliation,” where insurers double-check who’s enrolled in which health plans at what prices. That’s especially important, since some insurers say they’re not certain they’re getting the records of everyone who has enrolled.

( PHOTOS: 12 Democrats criticizing the Obamacare rollout)

The other pieces are the payment system that will pay the federal Obamacare subsidies to the insurers — due in late January for everyone who has enrolled by mid-December — and the parts that will compensate insurers that attract too many sick people.

To health insurers, whose cooperation the Obama administration needs to get people covered, the repair effort won’t be a success until all of those pieces are in place.

“In addition to addressing the ongoing problems with the enrollment files, other ‘back end’ functions, such as reconciliation and the processing of subsidy payments, need to be working to ensure the new marketplace is stable and consumers’ coverage is not disrupted,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the main trade group for health insurance companies.

Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which is implementing the law, told reporters Tuesday that the administration is “working to make sure with the fixes in place that we’ve addressed the most significant back-end issues and that we will work with [health insurers] so that we get accurate, timely enrollment information for them and for consumers.”

Still, for a website that had a rollout as disastrous as HealthCare.gov — the federal health insurance exchange that serves 36 states — it was a small victory for the administration that the site hasn’t crashed since the relaunch.

People did experience delays and “please wait” messages on Monday, when a million visitors checked out the site and some got placed in a new cyber-holding queue. But the site didn’t go down, and it ran more smoothly on Tuesday.

To Milarsky, that wasn’t even the most significant change since the relaunch. It was the fact that his navigator group, Primaris, can now use the website to show people their health insurance options — because it finally has a preview feature that they can use.

When HealthCare.gov first went live, most people couldn’t get far enough to compare health plans because they had to create accounts first — a design flaw that created huge traffic jams. The Medicare agency later added a basic preview feature, but it was so limited that it could give only the roughest estimates of what someone might actually pay.

That wasn’t accurate enough for Milarsky and the other navigators, so they used “workarounds” — like using a private website, HealthSherpa, that could provide faster and more accurate estimates for states like Missouri. Now, he says, the improved preview feature on HealthCare.gov is good enough and fast enough that they can use that. That alone makes the website relaunch a success, in his view.

“I’m overjoyed. That was the best news I had on Monday morning,” Milarsky said.

But other supporters of the health care law aren’t ready to declare the rollout back on track just yet.

DeGette and other Democrats said they’ve seen real improvements with the site, at least on the surface — it’s faster and doesn’t cough up as many error messages. But there will always be one basic difference that puts them at a political disadvantage: Democrats will never have full confidence to declare Obamacare a complete success, but Republicans will always be ready to declare it a failure.

“It’s certainly going to change the conversation. Do I think it’s fixed enough? No, there’s still work to be done,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.).

For one thing, House Democrats prodded administration officials at a morning briefing to explain what they’re doing about the error-filled enrollment reports insurers are getting — which could mean they won’t even know some people signed up. The administration officials assured the Democrats that they’ve already fixed the problems that were producing a lot of those errors and will continue to work on the problem, DeGette said.

An administration official said there will be a clear warning, when people select a health plan on the website, that they’re not actually enrolled until they’ve paid the first premium. It will say the health insurer will contact them, but if they don’t hear from them, consumers will have to call the insurer themselves or contact the HealthCare.gov call center for help.

Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) declared, “I don’t think you’re going to see Democrats — or anybody — claiming victory until there is an expression of satisfaction from consumers.”

Even some health care advocates are telling potential Obamacare customers not to be surprised if there are more glitches. But they’re telling everyone it’s time to give the website another try — because they’ll have to, if they want health coverage on Jan. 1.

“We think that at this point, it’s absolutely a matter of urgency that people need to enroll. This is crunch time,” said Jennifer Ng’andu of the National Council of La Raza. “We’re still cautious in our approach, which means we’re telling people to expect more glitches. They should be prepared for this to be a long process.”

Contrast that with Republicans, who are still declaring the law a failure. They’re not shy about rendering the verdict. They’re just shifting the focus ever so slightly, by putting less emphasis on the website.

Case in point: House Speaker John Boehner told reporters Tuesday that “it’s not just a broken website. This bill is fundamentally flawed, causing people to lose the doctor of their choice, causing them to lose their health plan.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell countered Obama’s speech with a warning about “higher premiums, disrupted insurance, and lost jobs” — not a busted website.

And House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa — that barometer of GOP overreach — is questioning insurers this week about Obama’s “you can keep your doctor” promise, not the website.

“We always recognized it would getter better eventually. We’ve tried to stay focused on the big, more fundamental problems with the law,” said a House Republican leadership aide.

Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.