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Joe Biden put a Bidenesque spin on the effort to fix Healthcare.gov on Monday, while attempting to promise that the administration would fix the site in time for Americans to register for health insurance on the federal exchange. There are many variations on what it means for something to be "so Biden." In this case, it means "off-message." Speaking to a group of volunteers in Houston who are helping Americans enroll in healthcare through the exchange, Biden said that "The truth is, we’re going to fix it," referring to the Healthcare.gov site. He added, "God willing."
It has not been the best day for the administration's message on Healthcare.gov. Press secretary Jay Carney confirmed a report in the The Washington Post that the administration's new bar for success for the site is if it's able to enroll 80 percent of the people who try to sign up online by November 30th. "I think the way to look at that figure is that of, say, 10 who go on the system, roughly two won't get through the system," Carney said, adding that he expects there will be three categories of users who will fail to enroll: those with complex family arrangements, the tech illiterate, and "those who experience technical difficulties." That internal goal of an 80 percent success rate is apparently why the administration's new talking point has been that the site would work by November 30th for the "vast majority of users."