Obamacare Enrollee in Web Ad a Computer Science Major, Managed Local Democratic Party Website

Andrew, the fellow in the ad is Daniel McNaughton, a 22-year-old student at Valencia Community College in Orlando, Fla., who is, of all things, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computer science.

Turns out that signing up for a health-care plan via the federal exchange isn’t quite as easy as the ad made it out to be. According to the Orlando Sentinel, McNaughton successfully enrolled after attempting to sign up at 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday, October 2, and credits his success to the fact that “a lot of people were asleep.”

McNaughton, who interned for Democratic state senator David Aronberg in 2009, also damned the infamous website with faint praise, saying that though there was “a lot of stuff they have to iron out,” he still found the experience “better than [he] expected it to be,” including the “relatively easy interface.” In addition, he told the Miami Herald that he thought whoever built the site “wasn’t prepared for the type of use it was going to get.”

Maybe he knows what he’s talking about; the News-Press (Ft. Myers, Fla.) identifies him as the webmaster of his local Democratic party in a June 10, 2012 article. According to other articles in the same paper, he also served as the chairman of the Young Democrats of Lee County and as a delegate to the 2012 Democratic National Convention. That said, his personal website leaves a little to be desired.

Still, the exercise took either an hour or half a day (the Sentinel says the former, the News-Press says the latter). For his efforts, he was rewarded with a “gold-level” Florida Blue plan with a $270 a month premium ($70 after the federal subsidy he’s eligible for), a $3,200 deductible, and a $30 co-pay for routine care.