Despite the availability of years and hundreds of millions of dollars to produce a functioning website, the Kathleen Sebelius-led team at healthcare.gov is still discovering glitches just days before the enrollment deadline. At least this one gives them another excuse to balme for low enrollment. The Fiscal Times reports:

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that HealthCare.Gov has a little-known glitch in its subsidy calculator that, though quite small, may be notifying people who are eligible for financial assistance that they do not qualify for a subsidy. The site’s calculator is an unofficial estimate that consumers can use to see how much financial assistance they qualify for before beginning the application process.

So, the glitch isn’t causing people to receive inaccurate subsidies, it’s just providing them with inaccurate information before they make the decision to move forward in the application process.

Still, the error could potentially be discouraging people from signing up for coverage through the exchanges, if they think their health care is unaffordable.

 (snip)

The health care law uses 2013 poverty guidelines to assess who qualifies for a subsidy. However, the website is using 2014 guidelines, which are 1.5 percent higher.

So a small number of families right at the border could be misinformed and not apply.

What’s interesting is the response:

CMS spokesman Richard Olague stressed that the tool is used as an “unofficial estimate” that consumers can check out before they complete the application.

"We encourage consumers to complete their marketplace application, where they will get an accurate determination of their tax credits."

The CMS credits poverty-level consumers with a high degree of enterprise and persistence. They are supposed to soldier on, despite being told that they don’t qualify, and complete the entire application process with insurers (which they presumably can’t afford), and then discover that the first information they were given was wrong.

This from a government program that offers advertising suggesting the reason to get Obamacare is so that you can get drunk and injure yourself without worry.