Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn is teaming up with Secretary of Health and Human ServicesKathleen Sebelius to bring Obamacare navigators to everyday stops in the Tampa community. On Monday, Buckhorn and Sebelius held a press conference to announce that Tampa would be opening its recreational centers to get more Americans to sign up for Barack Obamas signature health-care plan.
Buckhorn, a Democrat, said 96,000 residents in the Tampa Bay community are currently without health care.
If you think about what that means to them and to us as a community, that means that they are not getting the adequate health care that they need, said Buckhorn. We are opening up nine of our recreation centers [and] will allow navigators to establish a presence here. We will have regular hours that our constituents ... who dont have access to health care can come to our recreation centers and get signed up [for health care].
Buckhorn also said various pastors would help reach out to the faith-based community to spread the message of getting health care under the Affordable Health Care Act.
According to Buckhorn, there will be no extra costs associated with the rec center program.
This is not a bill. This is not a wish. This is not a dream. This is not debatable, said Buckhorn. This is the law, and were going to comply with the law, and were going to get our folks engaged and signed up.
With only 11 weeks left until the open enrollment period ends, the Obama administration is moving full-speed-ahead to get as many people as possible signed up for health care.
Here in Tampa, looking at the opportunity to open up rec centers and make sure that navigators are available is huge, said Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who noted that 3.5 million Floridians are currently without health insurance.
Obamas signature program came under fire after its debut in October, when its website, Healthcare.gov, was riddled with problems, leaving many unable to sign up for health care. Enrollment numbers showed the gravity of the situation -- in October, only 106,185 had signed up.
Sebelius noted that the Obama administration had fixed Healthcare.gov.
Healthcare.gov is a very different website than it was on Oct. 1, thank God, said Sebelius. Its easy to navigate [now], easy to use.
Sebelius also criticized Floridas decision to turn down expanding Medicaid, explaining that the expansion would be fully funded by the federal government. She said it does not add to the deficit. According to Sebelius, Florida would be eligible for $51 billion of federal funds over a 10-year period to help expand health coverage in the state.
U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., was also at Mondays press conference, claiming aDecember enrollment figure of 6 million sign-ups, lauding the fact that the state of Florida ranked No. 1 in people signing up for health insurance.
The Obama administration said 1.1 million people had enrolled through Healthcare.gov by the December deadline. Adding that number to the preliminary data from the states means almost 2 million sign-ups through the exchanges, but that number is still about 40 percent below the Obama administrations target of 3.3 million sign-ups by now.
Kathleen Sebelius has been at the center of much of the criticism regarding the health care rollout, with many Republicans calling for her resignation. When asked about these calls, Sebelius did not specifically address her critics and instead said she would be focused on making the most of the remainder of the open enrollment period.
We made a commitment that the website ... would be a different experience by the end of November, she said. We delivered on that commitment. We want to move forward and take full advantage of the 11 weeks left [in the enrollment period].
"Kathleen Sebelius visit to Tampa today is yet another attempt to sell this terrible law, which gets worse by the day," said RPOF spokesperson Susan Hepworth. "No public relations campaign can undo the harm that Obamacare has done to hundreds of thousands of Floridians and millions of Americans.
