State exchanges: Vt. Gov. Shumlin says fixes are working; Mass. makes progress on backlog; Calif. marketplace down for repairs

News outlets report on the operating issues for the online exchanges.

Politico: Shumlin: 'Websites Get Fixed'
Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin says the problems with the Affordable Care Act rollout are getting fixed – and that Republicans were boxing themselves in politically by focusing on failures instead of the successes. "Websites get fixed. We're fixing ours. They're fixing theirs. The federal exchange is working better," the Democratic governor said on "Fox News Sunday." ... Sitting on a panel with Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker, Shumlin said the refusal of some GOP governors – including Walker – to accept federal money was driven solely by animus towards President Barack Obama (Tau, 2/23).

Bloomberg: Health-Care Law Making Progress, New Hampshire Governor Says
The Affordable Care Act is overcoming its initial problems and is making progress in accomplishing its mission of expanding and improving coverage, New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan said (Selway and Salant, 2/22).

The Boston Globe: Progress Reported On Insurance Application Backlog
Officials running the state's troubled health insurance marketplace reported progress Friday toward addressing its most immediate challenge: a massive backlog in processing applications. Legislators have been scrutinizing the problems with the Massachusetts Health Connector website and the labyrinth many people who are not insured through an employer have had to navigate to get coverage. ... During a weekly update Friday, state officials said that over the last week, all 22,000 pending applications for health insurance that had been submitted through its website had been processed (Johnson, 2/21).

The San Francisco Chronicle: Covered California Website Stymied By Software Problems
Just as California begins its final marketing push to get people signed up for health coverage by the end of March, the portal for the state's exchange has been shut down because of software problems. Covered California officials took the exchange's enrollment portal offline Wednesday afternoon and it has been down ever since. It's a case of bad timing for Covered California officials, with a little more than a month before the March 31 enrollment window closes (Colliver, 2/22).

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Newly Insured Begin To Receive Care
Certified application counselor Eric N. Goren has spent the last five months helping people negotiate the often-perplexing path to buying health insurance on the Affordable Care marketplace. And primary care doctor Eric N. Goren is beginning to see the results of his effort at a clinic in West Philadelphia (Calandra, 2/23).

The Texas Tribune: A Focus On Helping Colonia Residents With Health Law
As she looks into buying private health insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act, which requires most people to obtain coverage in 2014, [Maria] Díaz is facing a new type of rejection: She probably does not make enough money to qualify for tax credits to purchase coverage through the federal health insurance marketplace. Thousands of residents of Texas' colonias along the U.S.-Mexico border are in similar situations after falling into the "coverage gap" created when Texas' Republican leadership declined to expand Medicaid eligibility for poor adults under the ACA, saying Medicaid was a broken system. Living in unincorporated subdivisions, where the uninsured rate is between 50 and 80 percent, colonia residents may be largely left with little hope of obtaining coverage (Ura, 2/24).

Newark Star-Ledger: Obamacare In NJ: Four Out Of Five Enrollees Have Paid Their Premiums
At least three-quarters of the New Jerseyans who have selected health insurance through the federal marketplace website have followed through by paying their first month's premium, according to the three companies selling the policies. The state's rate of paying customers is in line with figures reported across the nation (O'Brien, 2/22).