On Tuesday, 45 million uninsured Americans will have the opportunity to enroll in health insurance programs through a new website, healthcare.gov.
The question is, can the site handle it?
The “obvious” concerns with the online system are technology glitches, said Jonathan Cohn, senior editor of the New Republic, during an appearance on Morning Joe on Tuesday.
Cohn, the author of “Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis—and the People Who Pay the Price,” noted that buying insurance right now is already complicated and messy. “If it takes a few weeks for the glitches to work out, that’s OK,” he said.
“[Obamacare is] going to make sure that almost all Americans can get a decent health insurance policy regardless of income or pre-existing medical conditions, and it is going to start to change the way we pay for medical care so we get better care without paying so much money for it,” he said.
Americans can sign up for Obamacare through March 2014.
The Obama administration’s health insurance plan was at the heart of the debate that led to a government shutdown just after midnight on Tuesday.
Watch more on Morning Joe.
Michele Richinick