This episode of The Motley Fool's Market Checkup drills down on health-care's hottest headlines, biggest market movers, and updates on Obamacare's rollout.
In this video, health-care analysts David Williamson and Max Macaluso discuss how a simple oversight could have saved a lot of consumer headaches. Obamacare's exchanges have a series of problems, from bandwidth to giltches. However, not all exchange experiences are the same. CGI Group is responsible for the federal healthcare.gov sites used by 36 states, and they have been largely the most problematic. However, Washington, D.C., seems to be learning its lesson and is adding a simple feature from Washington state's exchange that helped make it one of the most successful.
That simple feature: the ability to window-shop. Most consumers have no reason to purchase insurance immediately, since they won't begin coverage until January. However, as we saw from traffic, there were a lot of Americans interested in seeing what Obamacare was about and the types of policies they could get. The federal sites required detailed information first, which is where a good amount of these glitches happened.
Insurance exchanges are the one critical part of Obamacare that is susceptible to failure. If people can't sign up successfully for insurance, the exchanges are in danger of not reaching a critical mass and potentially suffering an actuarial death spiral. Watch and find out what these means for both consumers and investors.
