Obamacare draws last-minute shoppers, deadline is moving target

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The main website for enrollment under President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law has drawn nearly 2 million visits, officials said Tuesday, in a last-minute rush to meet an ever-flexible deadline for people to obtain insurance coverage starting January 1.

Citing high traffic to the HealthCare.gov website and at call centers before Monday's sign-up deadline, the government allowed people an extra day to complete their enrollment in time to be covered by New Year's Day. In a blog post on the website on Tuesday, the administration suggested additional flexibility, without specifying a new deadline.

It was the administration's latest move of the goalposts as it tries to recover from technical failures and political missteps that dogged the enrollment drive for weeks after it opened on October 1. Trying to make up for lost time, the administration has announced a series of last-minute changes and delays to get as many people as possible covered under the Affordable Care Act, Obama's major domestic policy initiative.

Before Monday's rush, more than 1 million people had signed up for private coverage through HealthCare.gov - which serves 36 states - and 14 state-run marketplaces, according to state and federal estimates.

The figure, though likely to climb by Christmas, is still short of previous estimates that 7 million people could enroll by the end of March, the last date to obtain health insurance coverage in 2014. About one-third or more will need to be young, healthy adults whose payments into the system would help offset the costs of covering older, sicker people.

"Sometimes despite your best efforts, you might have run into delays caused by heavy traffic to HealthCare.gov, maintenance periods, or other issues with our systems that prevented you from finishing the process on time," Tuesday's blog post on HealthCare.gov said. "If this happened to you, don't worry - we still may be able to help you get covered as soon as January 1."

MINIMIZING THE CONFUSION

The problematic rollout of the health law known as Obamacare, which was passed in 2010 and survived legal challenges, helped send Obama's popularity ratings to record lows and stepped up Republican efforts to gut the law and use it against Democrats in 2014 congressional elections.

The more recent changes, which the administration has said are intended to show flexibility, have introduced a new element of confusion for consumers as well as the health insurance companies who have been pressed by the government to allow new members to pay, and even sign up, past January 1 for retroactive coverage. So far the industry has agreed to extend the first payment deadline to January 10.

"Health plans will continue to do everything they can to help consumers through the enrollment process and to mitigate potential confusion or disruption caused by all of these last minute changes to the rules and deadlines," said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for American's Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade and lobbying group.

The Affordable Care Act requires most Americans to be enrolled in coverage by March 31 or face penalties that start at $95. This week's deadline, which had already been moved to December 23 from December 15, applied to coverage starting on January 1.

Last week, the administration said people whose plans were canceled because they did not meet new standards of coverage under the law would qualify for a "hardship" exemption that allows some people to avoid a penalty for not signing up for health insurance.

Several state-run exchanges have also moved their enrollment deadlines. New York and California, two of the largest, added a one-day grace period similar to the federal insurance marketplace. Massachusetts said on Tuesday it would allow sign-ups until December 31 given heavy volume and technical problems that have hampered its exchange. Rhode Island, Oregon and Maryland had already extended their deadlines beyond Christmas.

(Additional reporting by Michele Gershberg in New York; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Grant McCool)

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Obamacare signup deadline pushed back to Tuesday

By Susan Cornwell and Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As Americans scrambled to beat a deadline to sign up for insurance under President Barack Obama's new healthcare law, the White House gave consumers shopping on the program's website an extra day, until December 24, to pick plans for coverage that starts January 1.

The last-minute move by the Obama administration came on a day when officials reported record traffic on HealthCare.gov, the enrollment website that struggled with glitches after its launch in October.

The website has been repaired and officials said on Monday that it received 1 million visits over the weekend while a call center took 200,000 calls from those seeking insurance under the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.

The hustle to sign up by the deadline for January 1 coverage - which already had been extended once - seemed to be a positive sign for the Obama administration as it tries to patch up a botched rollout of the president's top domestic policy achievement - the law that requires Americans to get health insurance or face fines.

Obama was embarrassed that HealthCare.gov did not work for most people shopping for insurance for its first two months. He also wound up apologizing for promising that everyone who liked their existing insurance could keep it under Obamacare.

The backlash has torpedoed Obama's approval ratings, alarmed congressional Democrats facing re-election in 2014 and given a boost to Republicans opposed to the healthcare law.

The administration instituted a series of "fixes," but the resulting patchwork of exceptions and deadlines has upset insurance companies that fear the mixed messages could threaten the delicate financial formula around which Obamacare is designed.

On Monday, administration officials continued to encourage uninsured and under-insured Americans to enroll in Obamacare by midnight but acknowledged that those who sign up before Christmas Day would be eligible for coverage starting January 1.

"If you are aiming to get coverage January 1, you should try to sign up" on Monday, Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a statement.

However, she said, "anticipating high demand and the fact that consumers may be enrolling from multiple time zones, we have taken steps to make sure that those who select a plan through tomorrow will get coverage for January 1."

(Additional reporting by Sharon Begley in New York; Writing by Susan Cornwell and Doina Chiacu; Editing by David Lindsey and Cynthia Osterman)

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In wake of budget deal, Congress slices up trillion-dollar pie

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As Washington empties out for the holidays, a final budget fight will play out in the nearly empty Capitol building as congressional staffers parcel out more than $1 trillion to fund everything from cybersecurity to student loans.

Unlike the knock-down budget battles that paralyzed government for much of the year, this debate will largely take place within what one lobbyist calls a "cone of silence" with Republicans and Democrats aiming to minimize discord as they race to set spending levels for thousands of individual government programs.

It's a chance for Congress to demonstrate that it is capable of doing its job after two years in which lawmakers let the government run on automatic pilot when they weren't shutting it down or imposing indiscriminate spending cuts.

It has also touched off a lobbying blitz as defense contractors, hospitals, day-care providers and thousands of other groups push to maximize funding for the programs that affect them most directly.

Business groups will push to fund job-training programs, while advocates for the elderly will fight for increased Alzheimer's disease research and teachers' unions will argue to restore money that has been cut from education.

There may be only so much they can do to influence the process as lawmakers retreat into their chambers to write the complex spending legislation.

"They absolutely know what our priorities are," said Beth Felder, a lobbyist for Johns Hopkins University, the largest academic recipient of U.S. research money. "At this point I don't think their phones need to be ringing off the hook."

For some, it's a chance to restore funding that fell victim to across-the-board "sequester" cuts that took effect in March. For others, it's a chance to launch new initiatives that have been sidelined for years as Democrats and Republicans have opted to renew old spending plans through temporary "continuing resolutions," rather than write new ones.

At Johns Hopkins, programs funded through the appropriations measures cover some hospital patients' medical bills and help students pay for their education. Researchers build satellites and develop missile-defense systems for the government and rely on federal money to fund medical research projects.

Federal spending is far and away the most important topic for lobbyists and their clients who hire them. Lobbying firms reported working on behalf of 3,076 clients this year for budget and spending issues, nearly twice as much as any other issue, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Collectively, those lobbyists can claim a partial victory. The budget deal that passed the House of Representatives and the Senate this week gives lawmakers authority to spend $45 billion more than would have otherwise been available.

RISING TIDE FOR INTEREST GROUPS

Now those interest groups will be essentially competing with each other for a slice of the same pie.

"We cooperate because a rising tide lifts all boats," said Emily Holubowich, who heads a coalition of 3,200 organizations that have pressed for more domestic funding. "Then we're competing with one another for those limited resources."

The deal provides a ceasefire in the budget wars that have consumed Washington since Republicans won control of the House in 2010 on a promise to cut spending.

It gives lawmakers on the appropriations committees $1.012 trillion to spend, splitting the difference between the House and the Democratic-controlled Senate.

It's not clear how that money will be divided.

Lobbyists say they expect it will be split evenly between military and domestic programs, with the money being distributed proportionately between the 12 subcommittees that each oversee a portion of the government.

But they're not likely to learn much more than that over the coming weeks as lawmakers will try to keep their work as private as possible, said Jim Dyer, a longtime Republican appropriations staffer who now works as a lobbyist.

"If a decision gets out, there'll be five people to preserve it and 10 people to overthrow it. You have to be very careful about the information that goes out in the public domain at this time," he said.

Congress hasn't written proper spending laws for most domestic programs since December 2011, opting instead to fund wide swaths of the government under continuing resolutions that freeze operations in place.

A CHANCE FOR NEW INITIATIVES

As a result, new initiatives have been put on hold.

Among them, for example, is a plan that would use advanced molecular-identification techniques to identify and isolate outbreaks of food poisoning, influenza or other public health threats more quickly.

Obama requested $40 million for the program this spring, and the Senate approved spending for half that amount in the summer.

Lobbyist Peter Kyriacopoulos brought in state and local public health workers to pitch the program to lawmakers in March, and he's following up with phone calls to staffers now. But he says it may be tough to convince Republicans to sign off on new spending.

"The House has been operating in a very unique way, so we go in and say what we can and we hope for the best," he said. "But no one's told me to go away," he said.

Others are more optimistic. Armed with figures that show how many patients in each congressional district have been unable to get treatment due to the sequester cuts, David Pugach of the American Cancer Society has been pressing appropriators to restore medical research funding at the National Institutes of Health to its pre-sequester level.

"When appropriators are making decisions based on what they say is most important, funding for cancer research and prevention should be at the top of that list and in all likelihood would do rather well," he said.

As the sequester forced sharp cutbacks in the Head Start early childhood education program, backers across the country ensured the cuts were covered in local media and pressured lawmakers to restore funding. Hopefully, that will have generated enough momentum to restore the $400 million that has been cut, said Yasmina Vinci of the National Head Start Association.

"Our first, biggest, most glaring priority is restoring the cuts that happened," she said. "I'm hoping we have done our work."

(Editing by Fred Barbash and Eric Walsh)

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Big Oil sits out lobbying on Iran as Congress stands firm

By Timothy Gardner and Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As debate rises in Washington over the first thaw in relations between Iran and the United States in decades, powerful oil companies are opting for an unusual tactic: silence.

Oil companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp and ConocoPhillips could earn huge profits if the United States loosened economic sanctions on Iran, allowing access to its oil and natural gas fields, some of the world's largest and least costly to produce.

But through September, at least, U.S. energy companies have largely opted to stand back even as Congress considers whether to further limit new oil exports from the Islamic republic.

It is an unusual tack for an industry known for its strong Capitol Hill presence on every issue from taxes to pollution rules to international trade.

But this particular issue may be too hot to touch.

"You are unlikely to flip any lawmaker, but you could offend them," said one lobbyist familiar with sanctions issues, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid being seen as speaking for clients. He said his company had received no client requests this year to lobby on Iran sanctions.

The oil and gas industry spent $105 million on lobbying in the first nine months of this year, behind only the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington watchdog group. Companies in the sector, and their employees, also donated a total of $20.5 million to candidates in last year's elections, ranking ninth overall.

It is uncertain whether the six-month deal with Iran struck last month in Geneva will lead to comprehensive restrictions on its nuclear capabilities, which could bring a full rollback of sanctions. Under the interim deal, Iran will limit uranium enrichment in return for limited access to funds frozen by U.S. law.

The June election of moderate President Hassan Rouhani offered a clear sign that 2013 could be the best year for relations between Washington and Tehran since Iran's 1979 revolution.

Yet the U.S. Congress has been firm in its backing of further action against Iran. The House of Representatives voted 400-20 in July to choke funding to Iran's disputed nuclear program by slashing its oil exports further than sanctions enacted in 2010.

The Senate also widely supports being tough on Iran, though President Barack Obama has pushed it to delay introduction of its version of the bill to give the Geneva agreement a chance.

DEAF EARS

For its part, Iran's oil ministry is hopeful a full deal could one day spur new investment by U.S. energy companies. Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh this month named seven Western energy companies it wants back to develop reservoirs if sanctions are lifted, including Exxon and Conoco.

Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said that his company always looks for development opportunities, but that current U.S. laws prevent work in Iran.

A Conoco spokesman said his company is not engaged in business discussions with Iran.

Both companies have not lobbied Congress this year on Iran sanctions, records show. Neither has U.S.-based companies Chevron Corp or Halliburton Co.

All four companies lobbied Congress in 2010 on the initial sanctions bill that targeted the OPEC member's oil exports.

Conoco lobbied that year, the spokesman said, as part of a coalition called USA Engage. The coalition was concerned about the impact of sanctions on joint venture projects in foreign countries.

"The 2013 legislation did not appear to have this impact, and no lobbying activity was required," the Conoco spokesman said.

The other three U.S. companies declined to comment.

Congressional aides agreed oil companies would be wasting their time if they attempted to persuade lawmakers to turn back existing sanctions or prevent enactment of new ones.

The effort "would likely fall on deaf ears at a minimum and at worst create serious political repercussions" if oil companies were seen as undermining the resolve by the countries that reached the interim agreement with Iran, the United States, Britain, Russia, China, France and Germany, one Democratic House aide said on condition of anonymity.

The companies that have lobbied Congress this year have largely been U.S. divisions of larger international oil companies, such as BP America, part of London-based BP Plc and Shell Oil Co, the U.S. unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc.

BP lobbied Congress between April and September of this year on the House Iran bill, while Shell weighed in on "general issues related to Iran" between January and March, records show.

"It is not unusual for BP to discuss proposed new legislation with lawmakers in order to understand its purpose and scope so that, among other things, we can remain compliant in the event it is enacted," said BP spokesman Scott Dean.

Shell did not respond to questions.

The American Petroleum Institute, the main oil industry trade association, lobbied on a provision in the bill that threatened U.S. shipping lanes, but not on the sanctions themselves, an oil industry expert said. The trade group declined to comment.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Marilyn Thompson, Martin Howell and Lisa Shumaker)

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Obamas hit Hawaii for year-end vacation

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U.S. President Barack Obama (2nd L) and his family, (from L to R) Michelle Obama, Obama, Sasha and M …

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U.S. President Barack Obama (2nd L) and his family, (from L to R) Michelle Obama, Obama, Sasha and M …

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U.S. President Barack Obama and his family depart Joint Base Andrews in Washington, to Hawaii for va …

HONOLULU (Reuters) - Barack Obama and family landed in Honolulu late Friday to kick off a two-week Hawaiian vacation, what the U.S. president earlier described as a chance for "sleep and sun" after a bruising year in Washington.

Obama, with wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha, along with Marian Robinson, Mrs. Obama's mother, emerged from Air Force One in casual garb after a 9 1/2 hour flight. First dogs Bo and Sunny were also present.

The Obamas were welcomed by dignitaries including Admiral Samuel Locklear, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, and Governor of Hawaii Neil Abercrombie.

The first couple briefly greeted service members waiting at Hickam Air Force Base for their arrival shortly before midnight local time.

The Obama have no official events scheduled during their trip, and will stay in a rented vacation home in the upscale neighborhood of Kailua. They are scheduled to return to Washington on January 5.

Obama ends 2013 under the shadow of the botched rollout of healthcare reform and with low approval ratings.

Among the president's beach reading is likely to be a 300-page report on U.S. intelligence gathering issued this week by a panel of outside advisers that urged more than 40 changes to National Security Agency surveillance.

(Reporting by Ros Krasny; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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Obama looking for "sleep and sun" after challenging year

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama declined to engage in a bout of political soul-searching on Friday and said that despite a botched health care rollout and stalled legislative initiatives, his year had not been all that bad.

He acknowledged setbacks but declined to dwell on them at a year-end news conference in the White House briefing room hours before escaping Washington for two weeks of what he described as "sleep and sun" in Hawaii.

Asked if this was "the worst year" of his presidency, he conceded that "we have had ups and we have had downs."

Even so, he said, "I think this room has probably recorded at least 15 near-death experiences" during his nearly five years in office.

While saying 2014 should be a "year of action," he did not hint at any ambitious agenda. As his top priorities, he mentioned getting Congress to extend unemployment benefits for people out-of-work and raising the minimum wage.

Beyond that, his wish list included avoiding a debt ceiling fracas with Congress in the spring when the nation's borrowing limit must be raised.

Obama's reluctance to engage in self-analysis contrasted with his last news conference on November 14, which was filled with apologies about the failures of Obamacare.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll puts Obama's approval rating at 38 percent, while other polls put him in the low 40s. This is in the danger zone for a president who is trying to help his Democratic Party gain seats in the mid-term elections next year.

"There's a real frustration with politicians in general and Obama certainly bears the brunt of that, but it's also the rocky launch of the Affordable Care Act that bears his name," said Ipsos pollster Julia Clark.

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U.S. President Barack Obama addresses his year-end news conference in the White House briefing room  …

AGENDA FELL APART

With an improving U.S. economy, fixes to the glitch-prone healthcare website and some strategic staff changes, Obama aides believe 2014 could be a far better year than 2013, where the pitfalls were so many that the Washington Post declared Obama had not just his worst year, but the "worst year in Washington" of any politician.

Obama began the year with great expectations, talking up the need for an immigration overhaul and ways to address climate change in an activist speech to mark the start of his second term last January.

Much of his agenda fell apart in partisan battles with congressional Republicans.

Overseas, he helped achieve agreements with Syria to give up chemical weapons and for Iran to halt its nuclear program, but the deals had potential diplomatic problems that could undermine them.

On Iran, Obama said he realized some senators want to "look tough" on Iran but insisted there was no need for their move to add new sanctions on Tehran if it does not abide by an interim deal.

Obama's State of the Union speech in late January will give him a chance to set an agenda for the year and establish a narrative for Democrats heading into the congressional elections next November, when the party will be fighting to hold on to their Senate majority and gain seats in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

"FRESH LEGS" AT WHITE HOUSE

"They've got to put their heads down and not get distracted by polls and figure out what their agenda is and execute it," said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic strategist with close ties to the White House. "I don't think ultimately it's that complicated."

Obama said he expects to make more staff changes early in the new year to add to some he has already announced. "People get worn out. Sometimes you need fresh legs," he said.

A key appointment was bringing in John Podesta, who was President Bill Clinton's chief of staff and led Obama's presidential transition team in late 2008-early 2009.

Democratic officials expect Podesta to help Obama's chief of staff, Denis McDonough, bring some order to the White House and be the bad cop to McDonough's good cop.

Obama and his aides see some reason to be optimistic as the tough year lurches to a halt.

They believe repairs to the troubled Affordable Care Act are slowly but surely fixing glitches in the HealthCare.gov website, removing this controversy from being front-page news.

A budget deal that Congress approved was also welcome news to Obama.

"It's probably too early to declare an outbreak of bipartisanship," said Obama, "but it's also fair to say that we're not condemned to endless gridlock.

"Hopefully, folks have learned their lesson in terms of brinksmanship coming out of the government shutdown."

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton and Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Fred Barbash and Ken Wills)

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Obama defends latest delay to his health reform law

By Roberta Rampton and Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Friday defended his administration's decision to delay for some people the requirement to buy medical insurance under his healthcare law, explaining that the rollout of his signature domestic policy is a "messy process."

Officials said late on Thursday that people whose insurance plans were canceled because of new standards under the law may be able to claim a "hardship exemption" to the requirement that all Americans must have coverage by March 31, or face a penalty.

The sudden change came four days before the deadline to sign up for coverage, which starts on January 1 under the law known as Obamacare. It threatened to further dampen enthusiasm for the law, which has suffered a chaotic rollout that has driven Obama's public approval numbers to historic lows.

Republicans seized on the latest announcement as further proof that Obamacare is unworkable, but Obama said it was just a bump in the road.

"I've said before, this is a messy process," Obama said during a news conference before leaving for Hawaii for the holidays. "When you try to do something this big, affecting this many people, it's going to be hard."

Obama also pointed to a surge in enrollment, after the disastrous launch of the glitch-ridden HealthCare.gov website resulted in fewer than 27,000 people signing up through the federal marketplace in October.

Officials said that more than 1 million people have signed up so far for new coverage under Obamacare through state and federal marketplaces.

Still, there are lingering problems. Consumers were unable to access HealthCare.gov for a few hours during the middle of the day on Friday, a critical time before the December 23 deadline. Officials said they needed to repair a website error that occurred overnight.

'WE SCREWED IT UP'

The rocky rollout of the law since October 1 has been embarrassing and politically damaging. Obama again accepted blame, saying: "Since I'm in charge, obviously we screwed it up."

Part of the recent backlash came when millions of people received policy cancellation notices, forcing Obama to apologize for a promise he made that people who liked their insurance policies could keep them under the reforms.

U.S. officials estimated that fewer than 500,000 people would be affected by this delay in the so-called individual mandate. The mandate is a core part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act that aims to provide coverage to millions of uninsured Americans.

However, the announcement raises fairness questions, as it gives a subset of Americans relief from the requirement to buy insurance. "It is the beginning of the end of the individual mandate," said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Republicans have opposed the healthcare law as an unwarranted expansion of the federal government.

Insurance industry trade group, America's Health Insurance Plans, criticized the change that could divert more consumers away from the new plans offered under Obamacare.

"This latest rule change could cause significant instability in the marketplace and lead to further confusion and disruption for consumers," AHIP President and CEO Karen Ignagni said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Jackie Frank, Terry Baynes and Lewis Krauskopf; Writing by Karey Van Hall; Editing by Grant McCool and Christopher Wilson)

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