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Early Obamacare statistics to indicate how many Americans are still waiting to enroll
A small sign-up number, particularly one dominated by Medicaid enrollment, would be seized upon by Republican critics as evidence that the law is a failure that must be delayed or overhauled before it leads to wider problems within the US$2.9 trillion U.S. healthcare system.
The administration is racing to make the federal enrollment website HealthCare.gov work smoothly by the end of November.
“There’s going to be a huge crunch. It’s a big choke point. The risk is people having lapses in coverage because the system can’t handle the volume, which would be a huge political problem for the administration,” said James Capretta of the conservative Ethics & Public Policy Center.
Prior to the launch troubles, as many as 7 million Americans were expected to sign up for private health insurance offered through the online marketplaces for 2014. An additional 9 million were expected to enroll in an expanded Medicaid program for the poor by March 31, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Before the October 1 website launch became a debacle, internal administration memos anticipated 494,620 enrollees in October and 706,000 in November nationwide, according to congressional investigators. Administration officials declined to confirm the numbers, saying projections are subject to rapid change.
A failure to fix the website that leaves large numbers of people uninsured could put tremendous pressure on the administration to delay implementation, including the individual mandate that requires most Americans to have insurance in 2014 or face a penalty.
Administration officials have not said exactly when this week the data will be released.
