From Wonkblog: Obamacare starts in 100 days

A little less actually since this was posted on June 23rd, its set to start up October 1st:

There are, arguably, two big things that need to happen between now and October. The first is technical:

The federal government needs to finish building the infrastructure that allows multiple government agencies to transmit information, determining whether an individual should qualify for tax subsidies. This is a really big lift that means connecting Health and Human Services, Treasury, Homeland Security and other agencies in a way that has never really happened before.

Also in the technical arena, the federal government needs to finish building the federal exchange, an online portal that most states will have their residents use to purchase health insurance. Fifteen states are also in the midst of putting finishing touches on the insurance markets they opted to run.

“It’s a compressed time frame,” says Kevin Walsh, a top executive at Xerox, who has worked extensively on Nevada’s health insurance exchange. “We are working diligently to implement the entire scope of work for October 1. So, you back up from there. It means we have to have all our enhancements done in mid-July, so we can do the integration testing.”

A few months ago, Walsh gave me one of my favorite charts on the health insurance exchanges, which explains why this technology piece is such a big lift for state and federal governments.

From outreach to eligibility determinations to bringing health plans into the marketplace, all of that needs to be ready by Oct. 1.

There’s one other task on the Obama administration’s plate just as big as technological work, and that’s outreach. Even if the technological launch goes off without a hitch, that won’t be much good if no shoppers show up to the marketplace.

To that end, non-profit Enroll America last week launched its education and enrollment campaign. The group started shortly after health reform became law. And their goal is, come October, making it impossible for an uninsured person not to know that there are new options available.

“If I’m uninsured and it’s October, I won’t be able to go anywhere without escaping a message,” John Gilbert, who leads Enroll America’s field operations, told supporters in a Thursday night presentation. “I turn on my TV and there’s an ad. I go on the Internet and there’s another ad. Someone shows up at my door to talk about it. I go to church and my pastor is talking about it.”