After an hour on the phone, most of which was hold time, a call center employee had entered the several pages of information (names, dates of birth, addresses, etc.) into an application on her computer twice without success. She suggested that it might be something to do with the fact that our street address has the word “North” in it, which could confused the system if it wasn’t entered to exactly match the records they had received. (So was it N? Or North? Or NORTH? So many options!) We consulted the company benefits office, which advised us to enter everything in all capital letters…
Three hours after beginning my second attempt, I succeeded, or so I thought. DC Health Link congratulated me on my enrollment and I thought a health insurance card would be making its way to my door soon…Once again, that assumption was incorrect. When we hadn’t gotten any information on our new health insurance plans by February 3, I called our new insurance company and see what was up. They said they had no record of our enrollment…
Eventually my family got a letter that did confirm our enrollment. While the letter confirmed that we had enrolled in something, it did not explain why our insurance company didn’t know who we were three days into the month our coverage was supposed to start. (More)
I shutter to think about the millions of people who have gone through the same ordeal that McCarthy went through. No wonder the online exchanges are such a debacle.
The bottom line is that the online health exchanges are a nightmare. They should improve over time, but don’t hold your breath.
Highly doubtful, and even if they do improve, it will only be slightly at the rate of pace that’s currently being set
“…the fact that our street address has the word “North” in it, which could confused the system if it wasn’t entered to exactly match the records they had received.”
If you can order something off Amazon or a retail site online and have it delivered to your home, the address portion of signing up for coverage should not confuse the system.
Their system must be very primitive if they have issues with the way “north” is presented on the address.
The development of these sites make me think back to the 90’s. I wonder if the exchanges are slow because they run on dial-up.
Or comcast.
Maybe the same bandwidth as Netflix and house of cards? Would explain the delay.
No spoilers, Jordan.
And they may provide a “well-organized” excuse that we have a higher volume of request than usual. We are currently trying our best to help you. Thank you for your patient.
I really do not want to hear this anymore…
Yet the Obama Administration will continue to push it down our throats.
“This was confusing, because there was an “Applications” page that listed all of your failed application attempts.”
At least they keep track of how often they screw up.
I am surprised that keeping track of their mistakes isn’t lost in one of their “glitches.”
Catastrophic…
The amount of Glitches out there is crazy