Yep, you read it right. The Christmas Eve deadline which was extended from yesterday to today is now extended again but it doesn’t exactly say when it is now being extended to. My guess would be that after who knows how many illegal changes to “The Law” the administration has already issued, they don’t want to have to issue another so they’re not dating this one.
It appears the Christmas Eve deadline to sign up for ObamaCare wasn’t really a deadline after all. Confused yet? Join the millions in the confused line. At this point it’s difficult to remember how many changes there have been, much less what they were for or what new deadlines were put in place for whom and this one doesn’t even appear to set a new deadline.
The Obama administration announced late Tuesday that people unable to obtain coverage by midnight on Christmas Eve through Healthcare.gov might still be able to get insurance by January 1st. The announcement comes after the administration already pushed back the enrollment deadline by one day. “Sometimes despite your best efforts, you might have run into delays caused by heavy traffic to Healthcare.gov, maintenance periods, or other issues with our systems that prevented you from finishing the process on time,” a post on Healthcare.gov said. “If this happened to you, don’t worry – we still may be able to help you get covered as soon as January 1.” The post tells consumers to contact the marketplace call center and explain that technical difficulties prevented them from getting covered under ObamaCare for the new year. The administration claimed that the site was running well Monday afternoon, saying the site received a record 850,000 visits, five times the number logged by the same time last Monday.
Friday, Obama said that more than 1 million Americans had enrolled for coverage since October 1. The administration’s estimates call for 3.3 million to sign up by December 31, and the target is 7 million by the end of March. After that, people who fail to buy coverage can face tax penalties. It is also still uncertain if the 1 million people the president mentions are people who have placed a product in their shopping basket or if they have actually pressed the purchase button and have paid for the product.
Several states running their own insurance exchanges, have extended their deadlines also and actually announced a new date. Minnesota has extended theirs to December 31st amid problems with its website and extra-long hold times to reach its help center. Maryland pushed back its cutoff date to December 27th and New York extended its deadline to midnight Tuesday.