Econintersect: Obamacare public health insurance exchanges (HIXs) have been open for a week. After this period of time one might expect to have some sense of how the program is progressing. That does not seem to be the case. It does seem that the difficulties in actually just being accessible or operational is a continuing problem.
In an article at Life Health Pro the statement is made:
“Many of the exchange enrollment sites are crashing, freezing or simply down for maintenance, …”
The same article continues the above as follows:
“…but tens of thousands of consumers have still managed to apply for coverage, exchange officials say.”
However, the numbers are sparse. From the same article the numbers presented are contained in the following short table. Editor’s note: The article has somewhat confusing use of the terms “processed” and “processing” so the numbers in the table must be consisdered tentative, subject to better definitions.
Some states have totally non-functional exchanges to date, including Vermont. On the national exchange run through HealthCare.gov, a New York Times article says the operations there are non-functional due to the failure of software provided by a private contractor. A government spokesman is quoted as saying the system cannot handle higher volumes, without specifying what “higher” is. The contractor is working on the problems 24/7 according to the government spokesman.
At 9:24 pm EDT Econintersect tried to enter HealthCare.gov. After going through a couple of screens which required a state to be identified we came to the following screen:
Clicking on “Get Started” produced over 2 minutes and 30 seconds of a spinning wheel, followed by the following screen:
The fact that the system takes 2 and a half minutes to tell you it is down does not give confidence that repairs have proceeded very far.
A live chat option is offered on HealthCare.gov. When Econintersect tested the option a chat was opened in 11 seconds. We disconnected so that our curiosity would not be the cause of delay for someone who needed help.
If any readers have utilized the HealthCare.gov live chat facility for insurance service help, Econintersect would like very much to hear of your experience. Please leave a message here.
Sources:
- Public exchanges insist they’re alive (Allison Bell, Life Health Pro, 08 October 2013)
- Vermont stumps health insurance buyers (Allison Bell, Life Health Pro, 07 October 2013)
