‘FRUSTRATING’ EXPERIENCE
The federal Department of Health and Human Services acknowledges on its website that using healthcare.gov to search for insurance coverage has been “frustrating” for many of the 20 million people who have tried to use it. Among the problems:
— Trouble logging in to the site.
— Difficulty creating accounts.
— Slow page loads.
— Confusing error messages
The White House has made no move to extend the mid-February deadline for enrollment — but White House press secretary Jay Carney suggested Monday that the penalty under the health care law for failing to get insurance won’t be strictly enforced: “The law is clear that if you do not have access to affordable health insurance, then you will not be asked to pay a penalty because you haven’t purchased affordable health insurance.”
— Staff and news services
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OHIO EXPANDS MEDICAID
An Ohio legislative panel granted a request Monday from Gov. John Kasich to allow federal dollars to be spent on an expansion of Medicaid that would give health coverage to thousands more residents. Ohio recently received approval from the federal government for the expansion, but Kasich’s administration needed legislative approval, too. The GOP-controlled Legislature has balked at the expansion, so the Republican governor — who says making health care more widely accessible is a “moral imperative” — asked the little-known Controlling Board, made up of six lawmakers and an administration official, to grant permission, which it did by a 5-2 vote. Ohio is the 25th state to expand its Medicaid program under President Barack Obama’s health care law.
— Associated Press
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GEORGIA ANGLE
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While the president was on TV Monday conceding that healthcare.gov is a mess — but insisting that the Affordable Care Act is not — the AJC was trolling platforms and browsers, trying to get in to the recalcitrant website. After intermittent attempts all day, it finally happened at 5:25 p.m. The system began working just as it was designed, or perhaps in spite of its design.
Although successful entries still seem to be the exception rather than the rule, the AJC found another Georgian on Monday who tried on and off for three weeks before hitting paydirt. Lissie Stahlman of Atlanta said that, using a combination of patience, luck and different platforms, she got all the way through the system late last week and enrolled in a new plan. Stahlman, 60, says she saved 50 percent on her current premiums and cut her deductible from $5,000 to $2,500.
“Keep trying,” she said. “Be patient. If you encounter a glitch, give it a couple of days. My big advice is don’t bother with the chat folks. Go directly to the toll-free number. I called three different times and got through really fast each time. They seemed to be very knowledgeable.”
Despite these signs of progress, it’s hard to know the actual state of the website in Georgia. The Health and Human Services Department on Monday declined, again, to provide any data on the exchange’s performance in Georgia. No numbers until mid-November, a spokesman said.
— Richard Halicks
President Barack Obama on Monday offered “no excuses” — and little explanation — for the computer bugs still frustrating Americans who are trying to enroll online for insurance plans at the center of his health care law. But software developers tasked with building the site said they saw signs a year ago that the debut could fail.
One source of the troubles appears to be the testing procedures employed before the rollout three weeks ago. Several developers of the HealthCare.gov website said in interviews that they were worried for months about the system’s readiness and whether the software meant to link key computer systems was being properly put through its paces.
In addition, congressional investigators raised concerns before the rollout that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had taken on the job of testing the computer systems for the new markets during the final weeks before the sign-ups opened Oct. 1. That job is often handled by specialized software companies.
Obama, who emphasized the website’s simplicity in the weeks leading up to the insurance sign-ups, admitted there could now be “no sugarcoating” the problems.
“The website that’s supposed to make it easy to apply for and purchase the insurance is not working the way it should for everybody,” he said.
He insisted that the problems would be fixed and all Americans seeking insurance would be able to sign up. But it was not clear how quickly that would happen. The administration is beefing up call centers and encouraging more people to enroll over the phone while the website problems persist.
The flood of computer problems since the website went online has been deeply embarrassing for the White House. The glitches have called into question whether the administration is capable of implementing the complex policy and why senior White House officials — including the president — appear to have been unaware of the scope of the problems.
Obama stopped short of apologizing for the failures, saying instead that “nobody is more frustrated than me.”
Even as he spoke, more problems came to light. The administration acknowledged that a planned upgrade to the website had been postponed indefinitely and that online Spanish-language signups would remain unavailable, despite a promise to Hispanic groups that the capability would start this week.
The White House says additional technology experts from both inside and outside the government are being brought in to work on the failures.
Administration officials initially blamed heavy website traffic for the frozen computer screens that many people encountered when they first logged on. Since then, they have also acknowledged shortcomings with software and some elements of the system’s design, although the administration has yet to fully detail exactly what went wrong with the online system and who was responsible for the problems.
It appears the problems were well-known to some of those designing the system. One developer said that in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 1 launch, he and his colleagues huddled in conference rooms trying to patch deficiencies in computer code.
“It was an extremely tight deadline,” said the developer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was told not to talk to the news media about his work.
A review of internal structural diagrams also revealed the complexity of the system. The diagrams show that applicants must submit at least 50 pieces of personal information, including income and immigration status. That data is then connected to at least eight distinct federal computer systems, including the Social Security Administration and the Peace Corps.
The schematics from late 2012 show how officials preferred a “data services hub” — a traffic cop of sorts for managing information — instead of a setup that would have allowed state exchanges to connect directly to government servers when verifying an applicant’s information.
On Sunday, the Department of Health and Human Services said the data hub was working, but the initial consumer experience had not lived up to the public’s expectations.
Administration officials have so far refused to say how many people have actually managed to enroll in insurance during the three weeks since the new marketplaces became available. Without enrollment numbers, it’s impossible to know whether the program is on track to reach the projections from the Congressional Budget Office, which estimated 7 million people would gain coverage during the first year the exchanges were available.
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