Is Obamacare’s First Enrollee Bogus?
By Megan McArdle Oct 4, 2013 2:45 PM ET
It seems as if every policy reporter in the nation spent the last four days trying to log in and browse policies on Healthcare.gov, yet was stymied by glitches. Many of us have also been on the lookout for people who had actually bought insurance policies under Obamacare. Over the first day, reports trickled in of various successes — most of them in Kentucky, funnily enough. (As I tweeted at the time, who had Kentucky in the office pool for “most successful exchange rollout”? Yeah, me neither.)
But no one could find anyone who had enrolled in one of the 36 exchanges being run by the Federal government, and people were beginning to doubt that anyone had, despite the White House’s assurances. Then finally, finally, Enroll America, a nonprofit ally of the White House run by a former White House communications staffer, came up with someone who had managed to get past all the glitches: Chad Henderson, a student and part-time day-care worker in Georgia who managed to enroll himself and his father in “bronze” plans (the tier with the lowest premium cost and highest cost-sharing). The Federal exchange websites might not be working well, but here at least was proof that they were working at all. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, and @Obamacare both retweeted Henderson about getting enrolled:
The next morning, Enroll America offered his name to the press. Henderson was interviewed by Politico, the Washington Post and the Huffington Post, among others. Details of his story emerged: He had waited until 3 am on Oct. 1 to log in. “Once I created an account, there were hardly any glitches at all after that,” he told the Huffington Post, putting him in rare company. Indeed, I tried again last night, and managed to get as far as inputting personal information before it froze up and refused to go any further.
Once in, Henderson said, he purchased two policies — one for himself, and one for his father. He could have gone on his father’s insurance, at a heavily subsidized rate, because his father makes $24,000 a year selling shave ice. But “he’s old school, so he wants me to take responsibility,” the younger Henderson told HuffPo. Henderson said he purchased a $175 bronze plan for himself. Since he makes only $7,000 a year, that’s a big sacrifice. If Georgia had passed the Medicaid expansion, he could have gone on Medicaid for free, but Georgia, like most Republican states, declined. Ironically, his father, who has a much higher income, is eligible for the tax subsidies. Chad said his dad would be paying $250 a month.
But there was some weirdness about the story. In the run-up, many reports said that the exchanges were going live at 8 a.m. on Tuesday — how was it that the only person anyone could find who had bought insurance managed to get in five hours early? Not impossible — the servers could have been brought up early, or the reports could have been wrong — but lots of people had been trying to log in starting at midnight, and no one else had gotten through. Yet Henderson had apparently created not one but two accounts. And why, if he had gotten insurance at 3 a.m., did he wait more than half a day to tweet about it?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-04/is-obamacare-s-first-enrollee-bogus-.html