Some State Insurance Exchanges Continue to Battle Technical Problems
By ABBY GOODNOUGH and REED ABELSON, NYT
Six weeks into the rollout of President Obama’s new health care law, some of the online insurance exchanges run by states are continuing to have serious technological problems, often mirroring the issues plaguing the much larger federal exchange.
In Oregon, the computer system cannot accurately determine whether people qualify for federal subsidies or Medicaid, so the exchange has hired 400 temporary workers to process thousands of lengthy paper applications while the problem is fixed.
In Vermont, customers are unable to pay for the plans they choose because of technical problems. In Hawaii, the site was not available to customers until mid-October, and users continue to report problems. Maryland’s exchange portal has had so many issues, including slowness and frequent error messages, that the exchange board decided last week to let insurers handle payments directly for now. It also delayed opening its small business marketplace until April.
“The complexity of the challenge has been clearly more than we anticipated,” said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, Maryland’s health and mental hygiene secretary and the chairman of the state’s exchange board. “We are really looking for significant improvement.”
(More here.)
Six weeks into the rollout of President Obama’s new health care law, some of the online insurance exchanges run by states are continuing to have serious technological problems, often mirroring the issues plaguing the much larger federal exchange.
In Oregon, the computer system cannot accurately determine whether people qualify for federal subsidies or Medicaid, so the exchange has hired 400 temporary workers to process thousands of lengthy paper applications while the problem is fixed.
In Vermont, customers are unable to pay for the plans they choose because of technical problems. In Hawaii, the site was not available to customers until mid-October, and users continue to report problems. Maryland’s exchange portal has had so many issues, including slowness and frequent error messages, that the exchange board decided last week to let insurers handle payments directly for now. It also delayed opening its small business marketplace until April.
“The complexity of the challenge has been clearly more than we anticipated,” said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, Maryland’s health and mental hygiene secretary and the chairman of the state’s exchange board. “We are really looking for significant improvement.”
(More here.)
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