Writing for National Review Online, Andrew Stiles argues that the HealthCare.gov website fiasco has endangered U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan’s political prospects in 2014.
North Carolina is particularly vulnerable to cost increases because one company — Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) — dominates much of the health-insurance market in the state, serving more than 3.7 million customers. But the company has encountered a series of problems with the federally administered exchange, enrolling only one person in the first month, and that individual has yet to pay for coverage and so therefore is technically not in the system.
Fewer than 1,000 people have even filled out applications through the exchange, but the government website has proven so flawed that BCBS has declined to upload any data, out of fear that doing so would result in the introduction of incorrect information into its computer system. Some families have been unable to sign up for coverage despite weeks of trying to access the exchange via the website, by phone, and even by mail.
None of this is good news for Hagan, who was swept into office in 2008, when Barack Obama became the first Democrat to win North Carolina since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Democrats had been reasonably confident about defending Hagan’s seat in 2014, says John Hood, president and chairman of the John Locke Foundation, a Raleigh-based think tank. However, the Obamacare rollout “is putting the first fear in Hagan’s camp that we’ve seen. She is vulnerable pretty much because of this issue.”
