Obamacare versus Romneycare

One of the themes that we have all heard over the past few years is that President Obama's healthcare reform is merely bringing the kind of changes Massachusetts had under Governor Romney to the nation. If that were really true, you would think that these national reforms would have minimal impact on the state of Massachusetts. Well, here is a story from today's Boston Globe:

About 50,000 health insurance applications, many filed by low-income Massachusetts residents, have yet to be processed by the state’s troubled insurance marketplace, officials disclosed Thursday, and it may take months to get all these people enrolled in subsidized plans. 

For several months, residents have been encouraged to file old-fashioned paper applications because the state’s insurance website has been hobbled by error messages and has crashed frequently since it was revamped in October to comply with the more complex requirements of the federal health care law. 

Frustration with the broken Massachusetts Health Connector website and the paperwork backlog was evident Thursday, when Jean Yang, the agency’s executive director, wept as she told the Connector board how demoralized her staff is.