President Obama Makes Symbolic Gesture and Signs Up for Health Insurance, But Not Through Healthcare.Gov
In a symbolic show of support for the Affordable Care Act President Barack Obama signed up for a health insurance plan, the White House said.
However, the president will still continue to receive health care from the military. Still, the White House revealed that President Obama successfully enrolled in an individual "bronze" plan through the Washington, D.C., exchange. The plan will cost the president nearly $400 a month.
Obama will pay the monthly premiums, but he will still continue to use his personal physician for himself and the First Family, a spokesman said.
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"He was pleased to participate in a plan as a show of support for these marketplaces, which are providing quality, affordable health care options to more than a million people," the White House said.
Due to the nature of the presidency Obama did not sign up for health insurance through the troubled HealthCare.gov website.
"The complicated nature of the president's case required an in-person sign-up," a spokesman said. "As you'd expect, the president's personal information is not readily available in the variety of government databases HealthCare.gov uses to verify identities."
In lite of the troubled roll out of Healthcare.gov President Obama extended the deadline to sign up for insurance to ensure coverage starting News Years Day, but some states have extended the deadline even further which could cause additional consumer confusion.
"They stepped all over the first two months of the enrollment period. Now I think there's this big effort to give people as much flexibility as they can to sign up for coverage effective Jan 1," Karen Pollitz, senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told Reuters. "The downside is there could be more confusion. The upside is that many more people could get in under the wire."
On Sunday, President Obama insisted that ObamaCare is moving forward and the website is improving on a daily basis and but urged those who wanted health insurance to enroll by Tuesday after the White House extended the Monday deadline by one day.
