President Obama likened HealthCare.gov to Kayak.com on the day the ObamaCare website went live, but the travel company wouldn't stay in business very long if it gave "incredibly misleading" price quotes, as Wednesday's CBS This Morning revealed about the federal health care website. Jan Crawford underlined how "in some cases, people could end up paying nearly double what they see on the website".
Crawford zeroed in on how the "shop and browse" feature on HealthCare.gov drastically underestimated prices for older citizens, in particular, and cited unnamed health care industry executives' appalled reaction to this latest problem: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]
JAN CRAWFORD: The numbers for older Americans are even more striking. A 62-year-old in Charlotte, looking for the same basic plan, would get a price estimate on the government website of $394. The actual price is $634....industry executives we talked to literally could not believe the government is providing these estimates, which they said were useless, and could easily mislead consumers.
Anchor Charlie Rose trumpeted the "serious pricing problem with HealthCare.gov" in his introduction for the correspondent's report. Co-anchor Norah O'Donnell added that "a new online feature can dramatically underestimate the cost of insurance". Crawford picked up where her colleagues left off: "The administration announced it would provide a new shop and browse feature on Sunday. But it is not giving consumers the real picture. In some cases, people could end up paying nearly double what they see on the website."
The CBS journalist soon detailed the grossly inaccurate price quotes that came out of HealthCare.gov:
JONATHAN WU, HEALTHCARE ANALYST: Incredibly misleading for people that are trying to get a sense of what they're paying.
We ran the numbers for a 48-year-old in Charlotte, North Carolina ineligible for subsidies. According to HealthCare.gov, she would pay $231 a month. But the actual plan on BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina's website costs $360 – more than a 50 percent increase. The difference: BlueCross BlueShield requests your birthday before providing more accurate estimates.
The numbers for older Americans are even more striking. A 62-year-old in Charlotte, looking for the same basic plan, would get a price estimate on the government website of $394. The actual price is $634.
Near the end of the segment, Crawford gave her anecdote about the anonymous health care executives who labeled the "shop and browse" feature "useless". She then added that the same people stated that "the website repeatedly states the actual prices could be lower, but it makes no mention they could be higher."
The CBS correspondent has been persistent in exposing the beyond problematic nature of the ObamaCare website since its launch. On the October 9, 2013 edition of CBS This Morning, she spotlighted the "disastrous" rollout of HealthCare.gov, and noted how "USA Today called the launch 'an inexcusable mess' and 'a nightmare'".
A week later, Crawford ballyhooed that the website was a "complete disaster", and contended that "the backlash, the criticism, the complete failure of this rollout" would get more attention if the partial government shutdown hadn't taken place. On Friday, the journalist zeroed in on the privacy risks surrounding the federal health care website, and noted that "glitches have, in fact, made the website unusable for most".
[Update, Wednesday, 1:14 pm Eastern: the full transcript of Jan Crawford's report from Wednesday's CBS This Morning can be read at MRC.org.]
