October 25, 2013

Here’s the Latest on the Obamacare Website

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Good news! HHS tweets: “FACT: In the first few days, very few could create an account on @HealthCareGov, we are now at an over 90% success rate.”

Bad news! Creating an account is nice, but apparently only about 30 percent can successfully complete an application.

Good news! “CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille said that about half of the roughly 700,000 people who had completed applications [] came through healthcare.gov, which serves residents of 36 states.” And CMS claims that the website will be functioning smoothly for almost everyone by the end of November.

I dunno. Is this the kind of happy talk that’s common when teams are working to fix troubled programs? Or is it for real? And is the end of November soon enough to avoid a huge backlog of applications?

I’m not sure. But that’s the latest. If there’s a reason for caution, it’s this: teams that are fixing bugs are usually under enormous pressure to offer up the most optimistic date possible for getting the system working. This suggests that the end of November is the absolute earliest plausible date for getting the Obamacare website working well. Take it with a grain of salt.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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