According to a Washington Post report Wednesday morning, 59-year-old Janice Baker officially became the first confirmed enrollee in the Delaware Obamacare exchange that opened, as most other exchanges did, on October 1.
Having tried to sign up online and via telephone starting on October 1, and continuing her efforts over the course of more than two weeks, Baker was repeatedly frustrated by error messages online and hours of waiting on the phone. She finally succeeded after deleting all temporary data, browsing history, and cookies on her computer.
According to the report, Delaware Health and Social Service officials were so happy to sign up their first enrollee that they celebrated.
UPDATE: White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was likewise excited about Baker’s enrollment, citing it as a success story of the Affordable Care Act in a press breifing today. Commenting on how an unnamed media outlet said it couldn’t find a single person who was able to sign up on the healthcare exchanges, Carney retorted that such inability was ironic because such stories are “all over the rest of the media, including in Delaware…” Perhaps Carney didn’t realize that Baker’s success story is all over the media because it’s the only one of her state.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=PZF51p5nqCY