Countdown To Obamacare: Enrollment In Its Health Insurance Marketplace Opens In 100 Days

With open enrollment in the Health Insurance Marketplace established under the auspices of the Affordable Care Act -- aka Obamacare -- beginning Oct. 1 of this year and ending March 31 of next year, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched a revamped HealthCare.gov site Friday.

“Health insurance is changing in important ways in 2014,” the initial blog post on the revamped site said. “We’ve updated HealthCare.gov to help you get ready for those changes, especially one of the most important: the opening of the new Health Insurance Marketplace. … Our mission is to help you understand your new health-coverage options so you can enroll in a plan that works for you and your family.”

According to the blog post, new HealthCare.gov features include an easy-to-understand question-and-answer format; personalization; a powerful search engine; and a seamless experience on mobile devices, desktop personal computers and laptop PCs.

Meanwhile, the Kansas City Star in Missouri published a nice Page One piece Saturday about the implementation of Obamacare, which pointed to a crying need for more accessible information about the multifaceted program that will soon affect millions of Americans without health insurance.

“People are confused,” Ryan Barker, the vice president for health policy at the Missouri Foundation for Health in St. Louis, told the Star. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there. People are going to need help.”