The second open enrollment for Obamacare plans launched successfully this weekend, with a few hiccups and 100,000 applications for insurance on Saturday
according to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell.
Speaking Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Burwell said that more than 500,000 people were able to log on to the government's Web site, healthcare.gov, and that more than 1 million people have been "window-shopping" for insurance options.
"I think the vast majority of people coming to the site were able to get on and do what they had to do," she said.
Two states that have established their own exchanges, Washington and California,
had glitches that interfered with new applications, but no serious problems surfaced with the federal exchange. At sign up events around the country, navigators helping new customers heard a
familiar theme.
In Chicago, at a kickoff enrollment event at the Robeson Theater in South Shore Cultural Center, enrollment navigators sat down with a smattering of applicants to get them insured. Toni Martin, who is employed, said she came to the event because she hasn't been able to afford insulin and other medications she needs as a diabetic. "There's a lot of people out there who don't have healthcare and I was one of them," she said. "This is the land of opportunities, why can't we have healthcare?" […]
Joseph German, who lives in Chicago's Washington Heights neighborhood, said he felt "extremely blessed" to be able to sign up for coverage at the event. He worries about the possibility of the law being repealed or struck down by the Supreme Court, and how that would affect low-income communities.
"If people can't have health insurance, they're going to be taking the little amount of money they have to pay for healthcare, and that'll take away from their households and it could affect their neighborhoods," he said.
That's a simple encapsulation of the law that seems to have evaded Republicans in their continued repeal zeal. Because, as they've proven time and again in the past four years, killing President Obama's signature achievement is a far higher priority than improving people's lives.