This special edition of the willis report, a users guide to obamacare. Live from washington d. C. , heres gerri willis. Gerri welcome to washington. Today the federal government launches a chilean dollar and tennant Spending Program called obamacare in a daring in the middle of a new budget crisis. The shutdown of the federal government. Only in our Nations Capital with such an unworkable contradiction become a reality. I am sure your effort about the shutdown of a long. It will be shortlived. An agreement will be reached. Our main focus tonight and the one that will have the biggest impact on your wallet is obamacare, our goal is to help you navigate this law and now it will affect you and your left ones. Lots of questions, even as obamacare goes full steam ahead in our government assures us, hey, everything will be okay. Who is going to get federal subsidies for coverage and how much money will they get . Why dont we know what the deductibles are . The ultimate question, of course, will this whole thing worker will it break the bank for generations to come and turn out to be the slowmotion train wreck we have all been warned about. With more on this, president of the American Action forum and a former cbo director and republican senator john grosso from wyoming. Welcome to you both. Thank you. Gerri i have to start with the glitches. We have a map we want to show folks of the states that have glitches. Virtually almost no state that is on this map that did not have trouble today. What happened . They were not ready, and it is not to believe that after two and a half years there were not ready for the traffic to the sites. There were not ready to determine eligibility. Literally there were not ready to turn on the switch and have it function properly. We saw the Washington Post report 34 states seven problems. In turn strike across the united states. We ran into trouble everywhere and started writing it down. Gerri people were getting error messages. All kinds of problems. Is this going to be the new face of obamacare . I dont think these are glitches. This is a systematic failure of the exchanges today that people seeing. My information to people all across the country is buyer beware. So many components. The president says it is going to be cheaper than yourself on bill which is an average of 71 per month. That is absolutely false. The president said it will be as easy as buying on amazon. I bet theres not a single american today that had that experience. The city like a doctor you can keep your doctor. Some many of these exchanges go places that you are not able to keep your doctor. Gerri of the problems, obviously. The catalog many. A Million People visiting the site today. That is pretty good. Is this the future . Will there be a million visitors to this site every day . I dont think so. That would be 30 million visitors every month. There are not 30 Million People buying Health Insurance. No one dreams of enrolling and many it read a lot of people were curious, a lot of reporters showing up to see if it works, a lot of internes. But it was to be expected. Think the biggest criticism of the demonstration is an opinion not plan for success . This is his signature program. Gerri one reporter tried to sign up in 37 different states, could only make it work in three. Think about those odds. People having real trouble. The president is saying this will have a positive and back on the deficit. Listen to this. The Affordable Care act is now open for business. It is settled. Gerri im not sure if you got all of that, but the president saying, senator, obamacare is going to have a positive impact on the deficit. My question is how can that possibly be true. It cannot. This is going to be bad for people, not just their health care, but also their jobs in their paychecks. Peebles hours and get back. Parttime workers a been cut back, other people, businesses are not hiring, keeping a low of 50 employees so that they dont have to provide insurance for those individuals. We will be much more costly than the president has any notion of what he says cheaper than a cell phone bill. And open to fraud. Gerri compare it to amazon. Let me tell you pretty compared its apple. Is the president comparing a rollout to obamacare to the glitz is faced by apple. Consider that just a couple of weeks ago apple rollout a new mobile operating system. Within days they found a glitch. So they fixed it. Add on rebar anybody suggesting apple should stop selling iphone ipads. Whats threatening the shut down the companys stated that somehow we do things in america. Gerri comparing it to apple. The most valuable brand on the planet. There must be upset. Gerri not forced to sign up by there. That is the big difference. A completely unfair comparison. Again, you have to do this. It will cost you, the taxpayer, lot of money. Is going to hurt you the consumer. And is going to hurt you, the worker contracted find a job or bitter race. Gerri we have seen a lot of companies that are cutting back on the number of employees, cutting back on hours. When a mother big concerns, the idea of subsidies. The big concerns about how much money was spent on subsidies. Does this make as vulnerable to fraud . Fraud as well as identity theft. The president unilaterally decided he did not want to apply the law. The law is written in a way to make sure that anyone applying for a subsidy, you have to actually confirming and verify your income to see if you qualify for the subsidy. The president said, forget about that. You will use the honor system. The way is to set up, by underestimating our underreporting income by just a little bit you can get he subsidies. This is fraught with fraud. Even people who are supporting the law say that there is significant potential for fraud and abuse. Which goes back to your reporter you think was successful in three states and may very well have been getting the wrong amount of money. We dont know. There is no way to tell which is a bigger achilles heel. Gerri either criminals out there trying right not to wreck the system and give money . And to the navigators, people who are aftee your identity. These socalled navigators hired to help you sign up by individuals that dont have to go through corona background checks, dont even need the same criteria that census takers have to meet in terms of security. So real opportunity friday that because youre going to have to get people bank account numbers, credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, all of these sorts of things to try to sign up. Even before the stains launched we saw an incident in minnesota where personal data was distributed in an encrypted form. He many repetitions of that we will see before this is are improperly. Gerri and we have a long way to go. And use information into the data have, it goes to the irs, Social Security, and security, health and Human Services, all members of different places. Individual people will have all of this information about you. People that you dont necessarily want to. Gerri a lot people are not signing a because the knowledge sharing and data. I have to get the two of the one at a time, the brady after today. Two and a half years to prepare, a chilean spending. Had they do . It failed. Not just a rocky road or glitch. This is a systematic failure. And two on a scale of ten, which sounds good because we expected a one. Gerri damning back expectations is an important part of rolling out one of these programs. We were here when the Supreme Court was debating this. Uni. Not too long ago. We come down here every time there is a big headline. The more i see the less i like. Gerri there is nothing here they should be a surprise to anyone, theres nothing here that should make you feel good about it. Youre going to have to stay. Penalize you. Thank you so much. Now we want to know what you think. What is a greater concern for you and your family, the government shut down or obamacare . Log on to gerriwillis. Com, on the right hand side of the screen analysis results of the end of the show. More to come this hour including the latest and the government shut down. A live report. Next, our users guide to obamacare continues with a focus on Health Care Exchanges as they open for business to be a look of what you can expect, details when we return live from deasy. vo youre a business pro. Maestro of project management. Baron of the buildout. You need a permit. To be this awesome. And you. Rent from national. Because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle. And go. You can ev take a fullsize or above, and still pay the midsize price. aaron purrrft. vo meeeow, business pro. Meeew. Go national. Go like a pro. You are gonna need a wingman. Anmy cash back keeps the party going. But my Airline Miles take it worldwide. [ male announcer ] it shouldnt be this hard. With creditcards. Com, its easy to search hundreds of cards and apply online. Creditcards. Com. Again, we have recommended from the beginning that due to the bond business in the to the need to be able to talk to a skill that ties it to help you navigate and saw three different plan options because that is important, wait a little while and you will have a better experience. Gerri back with more of our users guide to obamacare live from capitol hill. What to the age changes mean for uni . Here with dancers, the American Action form is back. Head of Health Care Analysis and u. S. News and world report. Welcome. We are doing in this particular block is talking about the real world and back. No one really understands very few americans have their arms around his law. Lets start with the deductibles. This is what you will pay out of pocket. What your expectations . Most people expected low deductibles, told this is a great thing that wont cost much. If you look, and we took a close look in d. C. In connecticut and colorado, you see some pretty hefty deductibles. Family of for the cheapest duct will on a bronze plan, the lowest category content thousand dollars. To shocking. Los deductible we could find for a family of four, 3500. Gerri a lot of money. All depends on where you live. Have some numbers i want to share. The average deductible, 2550. Compare that if you have employer sponsored coverage. About 1100. In fact, as you said, that averaged, up to 5,000. Youre making a study of this, trying to understand what is going on. What to you make of these deductibles and how they compare with privatesector plans . Rating the private sector plans, no question that people use the cheapest of the plans are going to face higher costs. Gerri they will see something more than they might expect. Might come as a surprise. We heard that the initial cost, d vermont. Said last week, 380 even that differs depending on where you are. It does. In some cases as it is considerably more. Some families in wyoming would like the navy pay more than a thousand dollars monthly application of a tax credit. Texas and virginia families of four earning 50,000 could actually be looking in only 50 out of pocket vermont. Gerri all over the place. It is. The sticker shock on the young and healthy. Everyone knows that if the young and healthy did not enroll they cannot subsidize the cost of the older and sicker participants. Again, if you look at the actual premiums they will face in these changes are some of the could have done this year, 2013 before the start up were seeing increases of 160 which includes these very large deductibles. You are paying, you know, more than two and a half times as much. Big deductible and you dont always know what you get to read a lot of these networks, youre on amicable hospitals and doctors should. I think when consumers actually experience this there will be a little bit of a feeling of revolt. Really . This is what im getting . Gerri to you, young people as opposed to bail us out, go out and buy insurance and float above for older americans. Is it going to happen and what will they see . One thing people will see a lot of plan options. Dow was on about a dozen different state exchanges. When they were working which was not all the time, there was an array of options. Take your time making his decision. Viewers need to understand that they dont need to sign up until december 15th. They have some time to weigh the options and decide how much theyre willing the spend and what can delectable they need. Gerri ive been telling people not to sign a banal. On leaving in on the website. Wait a month, six weeks because of the end of the day you need to prove the you have coverage by january 1st 2014. He not have to move right away. There is no reason to move quickly. And many of the young invincible said on the arithmetic and really thought, of just pay the penalty. Gerri its only 95 the first year. And not going to worry about the insurance and because you can also sign up later, they will just wait. Think that is a risk. It will be expensive in one of two ways, either everyone shows up and then we can afford it was the young invincible stay at and we have only the sick and the elderly and it gets expensive in that regard. It will be tough. Gerri the president said today in the rose garden at 85 percent of americans have coverage. Did not realize the number was that high. Thats a lot of people. Or talk about people at the margins, some 15 . But im curious about and what is not clear right now, the subsidies. How do you get the subsidies . What are the subsidies . Here you have to report to . The subsidies, the government makes a payment to the insurer reducing your out of pocket cost free of the premium. The estimates are that the 6 million of the 7 Million People are expected to sign of and will get a subsidy. It is important to know, there will get help from the government. They should not leave that money on the table. Gerri satellite getting . To they send me a check . They will send it to the insurer. Your price on the website where you buy the Insurance Plan will be reduced by the amount of the subsidy. Gerri now the irs will police this bank. How does this work . After airport. Had the idea that . At the beginning, as we discussed earlier, you simply say, you know, make 48,000. No particular way to verify that. The honor system. As i make. The subsidy gets into the Insurance Company. The address in principle in the future will somehow deal to check your income. Have the employer of reported. If you have too much, they went back. There are limits on how much they can get. If you got too little, too late. Do it right next time. Gerri we have a long way to go. A lot more confusion and answers today. We are kind of just waiting our way through this. Thank you for coming on. Really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Wow. How confusing. Later in the show more of our users guide including what you can expect the next time you go to the actor. Next, we turn to the other big headline in washington, day number one of a government shutdown. How far apart are both sides . What exactly is closed for business . Rich edson brings us the very latest after the break. 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It depends on how that plays out. Gerri how long could last . Now republicans are trying a strategy to fund the government and its and pieces but so far Senate Democrats are Holding Strong you can find the entire government or none of it and it depends on how well the strategy plays out. Gerri didnt they agree to Fund Military payroll . Everybody agrees on that. No exception. S