Another Obamacare promise ready to be broken

Obama administration officials said earlier today that healthcare.gov can now handle 20,000 to 25,000 users at a time. And the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has sent 275,000 emails to those particularly interested in Obamacare, asking them to try the website again.

Yet, it appears that Obamacare is about to blow through another deadline – and break another promise.

The Washington Post is reporting that the White House pledge that the website would be fixed by the end of this month is likely going to bite the president in the butt.

A Post story today said, "software problems with the federal online health insurance marketplace, especially in handling high volumes, are proving so stubborn that the system is unlikely to work fully by the end of the month as the White House has promised, according to an official with knowledge of the project."

With two more contentious House hearings on healthcare.gov problems taking place today on Capitol Hill, some pundits are already predicting that failure to get the site working smoothly by Dec. 1 would be a major blow to President Obama.

The Post’s Ezra Klein wrote on his Wonkblog that he’s pessimistic about healthcare.gov receiving a clean bill of health on Dec. 1. He added that the impact on the law could be two-fold. How’s that?

“The answer depends on two things. First, does the White House's evident inability to repair the website in a timely fashion (or even, at this point, an untimely fashion) lead congressional Democrats to panic and support bills -- like a yearlong delay in the individual mandate -- that make it harder for the law to succeed even once its digital infrastructure is fixed?

“The second question, of course, is how far off-schedule the White House really is. If healthcare.gov is working smoothly for the majority of users on December 1 but it only works smoothly for the "vast majority" of users on December 15, that won't matter much. If the website remains more or less unusable into 2014, that's obviously a much bigger problem for the law.”