Posted on 10/25/2013 9:09:11 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Trying to sign up for Obamacare the old-fashioned way — paper, pen or telephone?
Good luck with that.
With the supposedly state-of-the-art $600 million HealthCare.gov portal malfunctioning, President Barack Obama is urging Americans to go ahead and try to get health coverage by mailing in a paper application, calling the helpline or seeking help from one of the trained “assisters.”
But the truth is those applications — on paper or by phone — have to get entered into the same lousy website that is causing the problems in the first place. And the people processing the paper and calls don’t have any cyber secret passage to duck around that. They too have to deal with all the frustrations of HealthCare.gov — full-time.
“I feel like we’re sort of back in the era of control-alt-delete where we’re trying to figure out the different tricks that facilitate people’s enrollment,” said Jennifer Ng’andu, director of health policy for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group that has been helping to publicize the Affordable Care Act.
The administration for the first time on Friday said it expected the health exchange website serving 36 states should be in good shape in about a month. “We’re confident by the end of November, HealthCare.gov will be smooth for a vast majority of users,” said Jeff Zients, the former White House aide and management expert brought into oversee the repair drive.
But for now, with HealthCare.gov crippled by design flaws and a morass of messy code, the president and health officials have been using a variety of posts and announcements to urge people to try low-tech ways of enrolling. Basically they are saying while the front door is stuck, try the side.
Of course, reading an 800 number on national TV — as the president did in the Rose Garden the other day — created a flood of callers who couldn’t get through. That led to another wave of frustration and Obamacare punch lines. But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tweeted on Thursday that HHS bulked up the call center to include more than 10,000 trained representatives.
POLITICO reporters who got recorded announcements earlier in the week — sometimes directing them to try HealthCare.gov — can now get through to the call center. Once they connect, staffers like “Justin” try to get people’s information into the online system.
But “Justin” doesn’t have a fast track. Asked if the website works better for him than the general public, he responded: “No.”
“The site does not work for us either,” he said.
Sometime, the call center staff can get in and process the application while the caller waits. If not, the staff can take the information, put it in a PDF and finish later. Even then, it’s just the application — once that’s processed, the customer still has to call back or get online to select the specific health plan they want and enroll.
People do not have to stay on hold indefinitely — a good thing because Sebelius said earlier in the week that the center has handled about 1.6 million calls.
It’s similar in the world of paper applications.
Even before the tech problems, the government had a private contractor, Serco, to handle paper applications, which were expected to come primarily from less Web-savvy people. On Thursday, the company’s program director John Lau told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that it had completed between 3,000 and 4,000 applications.
Lau said the company does have the capacity to handle more than what’s expected — a paper surge. But he also said the customer’s data has to be entered into the Web portal and hinted there could be problems if volume dramatically increases. Lau didn’t say how long that takes, but a customer service representative said it would take about three weeks to complete the enrollment process.
“Our challenges have included coping with the performance of the portal as that is our means of entering data just as it is for the consumer,” Lau said, referring to HealthCare.gov. “With the relatively low volumes of applications we have received thus far, this has not been a problem for us.”
But Serco will be flooded with paper applications if the website glitches persist, predicted John Gorman, founder of the Gorman Health Group, which has advised some of the insurance exchanges. “Serco is going to be swimming in paper within the next two to three weeks,” he said.
Health industry experts have serious doubts about whether these quaint tools could get the Obama administration a good way toward its first-year enrollment target of 7 million Americans in the exchanges by the end of March.
“There’s no way a call center can handle 7 million enrollees between now and March,” said Dan Schuyler, director of exchange technology for Leavitt Partners.
The National Council of La Raza, Ng’andu’s group, has been working with navigators and assisters, more of whom are getting certified every day to help people sign up. They’re getting the clear message from the administration — only use paper applications if nothing else works.
“We’ve been strongly urged to enroll people online and the paper application is the last resort,” said Michele Cullen, manager of the navigator program for the Genesis Health System in Illinois and Iowa.
In the end, everyone trying to enroll Americans in Obamacare just wants the technology to get better.
“It will be nice when that website just flows and we can get people enrolled,” Cullen said.
But the approaching Dec.15 deadline to get coverage starting Jan. 1, combined with the paper and call center challenges, have left advocates trying to enroll people any way they can while keeping their fingers crossed that HealthCare.gov will improve.
“At this point, we’re three weeks into enrollment,” Ng’andu said. “We’re not going to wait. … From our perspective, we need to get individuals informed. We need to get them shopping.”
The ‘law/tax” was designed by prisoners,
implemented by FOO and FOM,
and criminal illegals.
All undocumented.
All unaccountable.
All without bids.
“The..... National.... Council ....of La Raza, Ng’andu’s group, has been working with navigators and assisters”,??
oh thats WONDERFUL NEWS
THE RACE...is at work with the Navigators
I feel the need to take a walk!
Heh ....
The Race working with ACORN....to set up 0’s *exchanges-of-your-personal-info*...what could go wrong, amigo?
Well, look at it this way. Is La Raza focusing on the healthy people that are required to make this work, or the subsidy dependent healthcare over-users who will bring this thing down faster?
stunned doesnt cover it.
Does the average American even know that THE RACE exists??
Id ask who michelle obama thinks she is...but we already have a fair idea.
Perhaps I should start trying to post in SPANISH..
as long as they dont focus on me....
And this is just the finding-out wtf it is and applying-for it phase.
Wait until they try to get a claim paid.
.Ha...are the 10,000 already hired, trained and provided with desks, phones, computers and office space....?
In any case...the IRS has 16,000 freshly minted agents that have nothing to do but polish their new shotguns who could be pressed into work.
If people use the federal exchange, the Affordable Care Act as enacted into law, does not provide for any subsidies. Only people that use the state exchanges are entitled to subsidies. I can’t wait to see how this plays out.
Oct. 25, 2013, 6:01 a.m. EDT
Court could block Obamacare subsidies in 34 states
Commentary: Legal challenge could knock out the federal exchanges
By Diana Furchtgott-Roth
The administration is interpreting the Affordable Care Act in extraordinary ways, and the courts are beginning to take note.
On Tuesday Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said he would rule on whether people who sign up for health insurance on federal exchanges in 34 states can get subsidies.
Under the Affordable Care Act, subsidies are only available for state exchanges. But through regulation the Internal Revenue Service has extended subsidies to federal exchanges too.
Separately, the White House signaled on Wednesday that it is postponing for a few months the penalties for people who do not sign up for health insurance — even though earlier this month President Barack Obama attacked congressional Republicans who sought to postpone penalties for a year. Also see: Obamacare penalties to be delayed.
Several groups are challenging the federal subsidies. Judge Friedman ruled that their case could go forward, disappointing the administration. The Justice Department argued that the court should throw out the case because the plaintiffs had no standing. After the judge’s ruling, the plaintiffs are standing tall.
Next week, Judge James R. Spencer of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Division of Virginia in Richmond is expected to rule on the same challenge from another group of plaintiffs. In August, U.S. District Judge Ronald White allowed Oklahoma to proceed with a similar case against the subsidies
The implications are immense. Family plans will cost $20,000 a year in 2016, according to the IRS. If Americans on the federally run exchanges do not qualify for health-insurance subsidies, few will sign up. Plans will be simply unaffordable. Obamacare will collapse not because of Congress, but due to flaws in the structure of the law.
The text of the Affordable Care Act states that people who buy health insurance from state exchanges get subsidies if they earn under 400% of the poverty line, currently $94,000 for a family of four. Most applicants will qualify for some subsidy.
According to the law, subsidies are available to those who get their health insurance “through an Exchange established by the State under section 1311 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” Or, in another section, those “enrolled in through (sic) an Exchange established by the State under section 1311.”
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The workers on the telephone are working off of the same computer program that people trying to sign up can’t get to work in the first place.
Of course there are glitches by paper or phone - they take your info and then TRY to log onto the systems themselves in order to enter your info ...
And there are Republicans that want to delay this crash and burn?
Ought to start calling and asking for all 150 language support - order all the applications in all the languages, etc.
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