Obamacare Exchanges are as Broken as Ever

Let’s go into the Labor Day weekend with a reminder of something that the Administration would like us to forget: Obamacare’s exchanges are as broken as they ever were.

From October through March, the media enjoyed reporting on the countless glitches people were suffering as they tried to apply for Obamacare coverage at either healthcare.gov or a state exchange. Since the Administration announced that it had slightly exceeded its target enrollment, with 8.1 million people signed up, it decided to stop reporting subsequent enrollment in the exchanges.

Since April, these stories have receded from the headlines; but you don’t have to look very far to see that nothing has really been fixed in the exchanges. Here are a few stories from the last day or two:

Hundreds of thousands of people risk losing their new health insurance policies if they don’t resubmit citizenship or immigration information to the government by the end of next week — but the federal Healthcare.gov site remains so glitchy that they are having a tough time complying. (USA Today, August 27, 2014)

Some Missourians are unable to get the healthcare they need because of denials and delays in Medicaid coverage.

Elise Tabor is just one of thousands painstakingly waiting.

A curved spine and herniated discs are part of Tabor’s problem, but she’s also frustrated that her Medicaid benefits have been cancelled for a second time this year.

[State Representative Jeff] Messenger says the Affordable Care Act has caused more people to sign up for Medicaid, and state staff are learning a new computer system. The number of pending applications is usually around 30,000.  But at the start of this year, that number jumped to near 50,000.

“We’re having a few glitches with the system, but they’re starting to work those out,” says Messenger. (KY3-TV, Springfield, MO. August 28, 2014)

Diana Daniels’s experience with the District’s health insurance Web site is the sort that gives government bureaucracy — and Obamacare — a bad reputation.

The Northwest Washington mom filed her online application for medical coverage for her two teenage daughters on June 4. The process supposedly requires three weeks at most.

No coverage materialized for nearly three months, despite Daniels’s numerous calls to D.C. Health Link trying to sort things out.

Daniels, a Harvard-educated lawyer, was general counsel for 19 years of what was then this newspaper’s parent corporation, and she is used to pressing her case in complex negotiations. Currently, she’s a part-time trustee of mutual funds for the blue-chip Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs. (Washington Post, August 27, 2014)

It’s the last one that should really make you shake your head: A Harvard-educated lawyer who works at Goldman Sachs and used to work for the Washington Post? Come on! She could be on the guest list for state dinners at the White House, and she can’t even get onto Obamacare.

Obamacare enrollment for 2015 opens in 78 days. Enjoy your Labor Day long weekend.

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