NEW YORK - Don't tell Elisabeth Benjamin it's tough to sign up for Obamacare. For two weeks, she has been enrolling uninsured people from her New York City office through an online marketplace created by the law.
Most recently, she helped a Bronx home-health worker in her 30s get health coverage for $70 a month. "By week two, the system was pretty smooth," said Benjamin, who's certified to assist people signing up for health insurance.
In Texas, which has more uninsured than any other state, 90 health insurance navigators, doing the same job as Benjamin, haven't been able to sign up a single person despite a flood of interest, said Tim McKinney, head of the United Way of Tarrant County.
The difference: New York built its own exchange website and it has been running with few technical troubles since the opening week while Texas, and 35 other states, are tied to a federal site plagued by errors and delays.
Three weeks after the sites debuted, a tale of two Obamacares is emerging with perceptions about the effectiveness of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 varying widely from state to state.
With many GOP-controlled states refusing to build exchanges, supporters of the law from Texas to Michigan to Florida have been relying on the troubled federal site and preaching patience, rather than enrolling the uninsured.
The state and federal exchanges are designed to sell health insurance to millions of Americans. More than half of about 500,000 enrollees since the Oct. 1 opening come from the 14 states running their own exchanges independent of the U.S. government. While enrollment continues through March, consumers must sign up and choose a plan by about Dec. 15 to get insurance coverage as of Jan. 1.
Elizabeth Watts of Kentucky, which runs an independent exchange, had her application accepted at 12:04 a.m. on Oct. 1, making her one of the first to start the enrollment process. Because of a rare disorder, she has already had a heart attack and a stent put in place. She makes $220 a week working at a Shell service station. Previously, the only insurance she could find was for $300 a month, which was too much for her to afford.
