Health care website problems jeopardize Obama's legacy

WASHINGTON - As his administration scrambles to fix the online enrollment process under the Affordable Care Act, President Obama is facing a challenge that threatens to undercut the most significant legislative victory of his presidency.

The difficulty of the situation, and the pressing need to find a solution, was underscored on Tuesday when the White House announced that Obama has tapped Jeffrey Zients, a former deputy White House budget director who has helped the president fix other troubled government programs, to lead the embattled Department of Health and Human Services' effort to repair the online exchange.

Zients' appointment came a day after Obama acknowledged deep disappointment about the problematic rollout of the law's enrollment process.

The online website was billed ahead of the rollout as an easy-to-use portal where the uninsured could window shop for their health care options. Instead it is plagued with problems. The stakes in fixing the process could not be higher for Obama.

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The health care overhaul stands as the most visible example of Obama's political philosophy that there are still areas where government can best serve the public interest. With the passage of the major health care law overhaul in 2010, Obama accomplished something that Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton all tried and failed to get done during their time leading the country.

'The longer this gets delayed, the less believable the excuses of the Obama administration become to people,' said Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida. 'It feeds into the concerns that people have about inefficiencies and waste by government at a time when many people are still struggling to get by.'

GOP lawmakers have put up plenty of opposition during the rollout. But arguably the administration's failed introduction of HealthCare.gov this month has provided the greatest threat to undermining implementation of the law.

The tortured route toward implementation of the law is well-documented.

Republicans won control of the House in 2010 on a wave of Tea Party conservatives who were swept into office campaigning as the antidote to what they saw as big government in the aftermath of Obama's push for the health care law.

House Republicans subsequently have cast more than 40 unsuccessful votes to defund or delay Obamacare - including one that led to the first federal government shutdown this month in nearly 18 years.

The glue of the law known as the individual mandate, which requires that most Americans purchase health insurance or face a fine, survived a Supreme Court challenge when conservative Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court's liberal wing to rule the law constitutional.

Now an effort that the White House is billing as a 'tech surge' to fix the website is crucial to the White House's ability to reach its goal of signing up 7 million people for coverage through government exchanges by the end of March.

So far, the White House has shed little light on how much progress has been made toward reaching that goal.

More than 19 million people have logged on to the federal website, which is being run for 36 states that declined to set up their own exchanges. And nearly 500,000 have filled out applications for insurance through both the federal and state-run sites, but the White House won't say how many have enrolled.

Keeping those stats close to the vest is only fueling a renewed Republican assault on Obama's health care overhaul.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Tuesday blasted the administration for a lack of transparency and said that he would introduce legislation in the Senate next week to delay the individual mandate until six months after the Government Accountability Office certifies that the website and other signup options are properly functioning. And Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, likened the troubled website to something that would be run by Nigerian e-mail scammers.

'You may have noticed that all the Nigerian e-mail scammers have become a lot less active lately,' Cruz joked to constituents in Texas. 'They all have been hired to run the Obamacare website.'

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Darrell West, an expert on governance issues at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said even if the administration is now able to fix the problems with the website, it could further diminish public opinion for a law that still faces skepticism. Forty-three percent approve of the law, while 51% disapprove, according to a CBS News poll published Tuesday.

'This is not just a glitch,' West said of the website problem. 'This is a major problem for his entire effort at health care reform.'