A diarist at Kos has compiled a range of reports showing that enrollments in ACA-related exchanges has taken off in the last few weeks and could already cover over a million Americans. This is pretty good news that could be great if the rate of signups continues to accelerate (e.g., backed-up demand gets filled at the end as problems get fixed and procrastinators sign up). Romneycare followed a similar trajectory in MA so there is plenty of cause for optimism.
Let’s hear from you. Many of you folks have already signed up for plans either with no trouble (especially in KY and CA) or after some troubleshooting with healthcare.gov. A number of others had problems signing up even as late as two weeks ago. How do things stand now? If you use individual market insurance or would like to, have you signed up already? Do you have any lingering problems with the system? As always your feedback helps a lot to see how it is working for real people.
***Update***
An important point from commenter jharp, cleaned up slightly for people with internet filters at work.
A co worker of my son who is 50 years old and has no insurance and who was just socked with a bill for $65,000 to remove 8 inches of her colon, was stunned when I told her about ObamaCare and the exchanges.
She told me I was the very first person to tell her it was a good deal. I think she makes about $25,000 and she was simply stunned that ObamaCare was going to help someone like her.
[…]ing right wing […]holes and their […]ing lies and […]ing bull[…] are going to cost people vast sums of money and likely will cost someone their life as well.
Could not have said it better myself. Let people know they have a right to basic health insurance now. You could save someone’s life.
gussie
I signed up in CA. It took 4 days of frustration. Was a deeply annoying experience. Then it saved me $400/month, and I got much better insurance for my family.
At least, I think I signed up. I read something recently about all the people who aren’t actually signed up even though they went through all the steps?
Erin
I completed my enrollment and paid the first month premium from the provided link two nights ago. Feels good to have it done!
My policy is almost identical to the one I had, except that the one I had didn’t cover maternity and some of the other new requirements. Anthem had been trying to get me to renew early so I could get that extra year of a grandfathered policy. My new policy is literally one dollar less than the grandfathered policy would have been.
All that said – it is still a crappy policy – 12,000 family deductible before it pays anything, aside of course, for the wellness and preventative care visits which are now included with no co-pay or cost sharing.
smintheus
We finally managed to cancel our original glitchy application last week, and then it was a breeze signing up. Will have a good Gold plan, much better than I have now, with premiums that are lower.
jharp
A co worker of my son who is 50 years old and has no insurance and who was just socked with a bill for $65,000 to remove 8 inches of her colon was stunned when I told her about ObamaCare and the exchanges.
She told me I was the very first person to tell her it was a good deal. I think she makes about $25,000 and she was simply stunned that ObamaCare was going to help someone like her.
Fucking right wing fucking assholes and their fucking lies and fucking bullshit are going to cost people vast sums of money and likely will cost someone their life as well.
Ben Franklin
Anecdotally, my wife recently needed a catscan for a possible kidneystone. The Dr. didn’t mark it as emergency procedure because he didn’t know at the time. We took the prescription to the clinic doing the procedure and I was told it would take 3-5 business days to get approval from the Ins co. The 1700 dollar bill would have been all mine without prior approval. The money guy was shocked that as soon as they put in the paperwork, it was approved. If I’m not mistaken, is one of the operations of ACA and making the providers and Ins co’s more efficient and responsive in real patent time, that is.
Mnemosyne
There was a lurker with questions in one of the posts yesterday who was trying to figure out how to reduce her quoted costs (well, other than quitting smoking, which was my oh-so-helpful advice). Hopefully she’ll repost in this thread and see if she gets more answers.
fuckwit
Signed up a few weeks ago. I can afford medical insurance at last!! Helped someone else sign up last night. No problems, and she saved $200/mo over what Anthem was going to screw her for at work.
I heard that I’m not really in until I make that first payment, but it appears that’s false, and I’m in:
Tim F.
@smintheus: Great to hear. I was worried about you.
Kay
Good for him for compiling his own reports. He probably can’t get it much more wrong than what we’re constantly presented with as “fact”:
fuckwit
@jharp: And those poor folks who’ve been lied to, and their children, and parents, and families, and friends, will never forgive the Rethugs for that. Ever.
This is the end of the Rethug party, via a self-inflicted wound. Too bad– if only they’d had Obamacare, they might have been saved.
patrick II
The cost to people of vast sums of money is the point of the Republicans hate of Obamacare — that cost is profit to republican CEO business sponsors. The “cost someone their life as well” part is beside the point.
David M
Signed up for my wife and myself in WA and the exchange was easy to use. Premiums are the same for my wife and a little higher for myself, policies are roughly equivalent to what we had before.
And I really hate all the right-wing Obamacare bullshit on the internet now, there were a couple times I was searching for something, but it was almost impossible to find the answer. The results were mostly unrelated nonsense the wingers were pushing and it made finding relevant information much more difficult than it should have been.
Cacti
Gosh, who knew that most people would wait until the end to get signed up?
It’s not like most people wait until April to file their taxes.
schrodinger's cat
NYT headline from this morning:
Uninsured Skeptical of Health Care Law in Poll
mainsailset
I finished my sign up in WA state on Wednesday. I had tried using the local navigators 10/4 but the site was down and we weren’t able to finish. I used the navigator again on Monday but the site was having issues with peoples’ passwords. I kept trying and finally Wed got in.
I’m going to save $450 and get a better plan than I had!
My niece also had the experience of getting a bronze plan for $68. She began tinkering with the section that asks for income and discovered something I hadn’t seen before. She says, and I haven’t verified this, that depending on your income level that there is a 2ndary offset that shows up. This one is in addition to the premium and affects the co-pay amount. She did comparisons gold vs silver and said that with the offsets it made a big drew down the extra value of the gold.
I hadn’t heard anything about this, anyone else find it?
MomSense
Signed up, got my invoice in the mail, paid my invoice this morning over the phone, and have healthcare for myself and my kids! BTW, my invoice showed the amount of the monthly subsidy which I think is a great piece of information for people to have.
Mike in NC
Where I live almost all of the vitriol about ACA comes from people in their 70s and 80s who believe all the bullshit FOX News crams down their throats.
That they’re on Social Security and get to use Medicare is different because something mumble something and BLACK people in their WHITE House!
fuckwit
OK, that said, annoying usability complaints about CoveredCA:
1) They don’t make it really clear that the “shop for plans” section is a spreadsheet, and you can go back and change assumptions
2) There’s a whole bunch of bullshit survey crap that they make you enter information twice, even 3 times IIRC
3) WHY CAN’T YOU ACCEPT (and quietly ignore) DASHES AND PARENS IN A PHONE NUMEBR OR SSN!?? Very annoying to people used to typing (415) 555-1111 and you get (415) 555- and it won’t take anymore. It confuses people. My god, regexps to handle this have been available since the first web CGI forms written in Perl in 1995. For fuck’s sake.
4) In the shopping section, frame inside of frame is REALLY ANNOYING in the compare plans section (on firefox, and chrome, not sure about others). Scrolling to scroll. It also took me a while to figure out that the information you get by clicking the plan is the same that’s in the accordion underneath the plan. And that almost all plans in the same metal tier have the exact same coverage and details.
5) It’s also confusing that in the shopping/comparision section, there’s an “APPLY” button, but in the nearly identical interface in the buying section, it’s an “ADD” button. Someone over there should have read Larry Tesler’s thoughts on modality.
6) It’s REALLY ANNOYING how the dental plans are HIDDEN, and you can’t see them until you go all the way through and checkout your cart and add a plan, and only THEN can you look at dental.
7) It seemed to be impossible to find out what it would cost to cover JUST a child– no adult– in cases where the adult has a plan at work and just wanted to buy child coverage (since the plan at work was completely fucking ridiculously, comically, extortionately expensive for adding child coverage). There may be a way to do it, but the web site didn’t make it clear.
8) Occasionally it would crash my browser and log me out. I’d have to log back in again, and all my stuff was there, so no big.
9) I’m sure there were more, I just don’t remember.
That said, the fact that this thing exists at all is amazing. I’m very thankful and I’m not surprised that version 1.0 launched with usability bugs (shocking! I know. MY code NEVER has any bugs…). Also, pleasant surprise that kids vision appears to be covered for free. Nice touch, I love how they managed to sneak in some sweet, sweet soshalism!!
A few weeks ago, when I was still confused, I did call a local clinic listed on the “ask someone locally” section to ask questions, they were very kind, and then was able to compelte the application online on my own. The clinic said they were still waiting for certification to actually sign people up! Unsurpsing, didn’t get any information from my clinic about Obamacare until like the last week of NOvember. This makes me wonder if there will be a sudden huge influx of poor folks signing up at the last minute, finally pulled into the system by their clinic.
I did OK because I’m a computer-savvy geek. I can’t imagine how folks who are older or less educated or don’t have English as their first language will fare… but hopefully there are enough people around to help.
maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor
@MomSense: Congrats on Obama Claus giving you and yours peace of mind for the holidays.
burnspbesq
@gussie:
You’ll know you’re signed up when you get a bill.
Seriously, call the carrier that you think you signed up with, give them whatever identifying information they ask for, and ask them to verify that you’re in their system.
I did that with Blue Shield two weeks ago, when a month had passed after I signed up and I hadn’t gotten any mail from them. The nice person I spoke to verified that I was enrolled, and the first bill cam last week. Paying it today, in fact.
I hope I can sign up to pay electronically instead of having to write and mail a check every month. In fact, I’d like to be able to use a credit card to pay; that’s a lot of rewards points.
Richard Mayhew
@mainsailset: Yes, these are Silver Cost Sharing Assistance plans. There are three buckets of cost sharing help, 100% to 150% federal poverty line, 151% to 200% and 201% to 250% FPL. At the low end the Silver gets transformed into a super platinum plan, and at the high end of the income range, the silver gets to a very nice Silver or tarnished gold.
The Dangerman
Covered in CA as of 1/1; much better coverage for much less cost, a lovely combination (picture Rich Lowery Starbursts here, figuratively, of course; no keyboard cleanup required).
ETA: Applied early and, yes, the process sucked large CA lemons, but the end result is a sweet, sweet Lemonade. Fuck you, Fox News, you fucking propagandist pieces of shit that would make Goebbels proud (hmm, hope that is grammatically correct)
fuckwit
@burnspbesq: I tried calling Blue Shield yesterday. 35 minutes later and still on hold, I hung up. Poor basterds must be completely swamped. I don’t need to pile on. I’ll wait and see.
smintheus
@Tim F.: Thanks Tim, it was quite the nightmare account. I wondered whether I was dealing with a computer named Hal: “I’m sorry, I can’t allow you to do that.”
Amir Khalid
In the thread under Richard Mayhew’s post, I asked about the cost of an EKG in America and got answers I found alarming: apparently, it could be anything up to $3,000, depending on the healthcare provider’s whim; two commenters who’d just had EKGs themselves said they were charged $500 to $600-plus. (I will pay a fixed price of $37 (120 ringgit) for mine at a major teaching hospital in Kuala Lumpur.) Is Obamacare doing anything to rein in these crazy price differentials?
Davis X. Machina
Some of those poor folks who’ve been lied to, and their children, and parents, and families, and friends, will never forgive the Rethugs for that. The rest will keep right on voting vote their church, and vote their race, and vote their tribe, and vote the way their parents did. It will only affect the R vote on the margins.
And over time, even that marginal vote will shrink.
Any political party that predicates itself on appeals to the worst in people is going to stay in business for a long, long time. Au fond too many people are bastards for any other outcome.
This struggle never ends, and there’s no guarantee the good guys win. Ever.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@jharp:
To wit: even a large segment of doctors are convinced there are still ‘death panels’. You know, despite the wingnuts winning and having the actual part of the ACA (dealing with reimbursing doctors who encouraged end-of-life treatment discussions with patients) shitcanned.
This is why I’m worried about the state of things in the long-run: the GOP has successfully shit in the well and poisoned the entire process to where people will either not even give the damn thing a chance or immediately proclaim “IT”S BROKEN, OBAMA STOLE MY HEALTH CARE, I HATES HIM!!” soon as they try once and get stonewalled.
bemused
Surely it will cost Republicans loss of credibility with some Republican voters who are not completely wackadoodle.
maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor
@Amir Khalid:
The only ones paying $3K for an EKG are those paying out of pocket–there isn’t a government or insurance company on the planet that will reimburse at that rate. To the extent the ACA gets more people insured, you’ll hear less and less of this.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: The evidence seems to be that people are signing up at an increased rate. Once enough people do, word of mouth is going to do the rest. My scenario is at least as likely as yours.
Mnemosyne
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Wait, you’re surprised that 27 percent of ear/nose/throat doctors think it’s true?
Me, I think pollsters have started fucking with us and working that number in wherever they can.
(Also, too, ENTs have a big reason to be anti-Obamacare — many of them also do plastic surgery and make very nice profits on nose jobs and facelifts.)
smintheus
@Amir Khalid: The US system of charges is arbitrary and bizarre. I recently had a minor outpatient surgery for which the insurer received TWO bills for anaethesia, each for $1700. The insurer allowed only $170 however.
Amir Khalid
@maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor:
It amazes me that Americans can be ripped off like that just because they’re paying out of pocket.
JPL
@bemused: haha… The Fox news watchers will think the plan is a failure. There will be a person in Wackadoodle, AL who died while waiting in long lines to see a doctor.
smintheus
@Amir Khalid: Pharmacists regularly apologize to customers about the prices they charge to people who lack insurance. The one prescription I regularly used was nearly 4 times the price when I had no insurance.
Monala
I have shared before about having insurance through my employer, which only covers employees. My husband works as an uninsured contractor, and he’s a diabetic who is over age 50. We looked into the pre-existing condition insurance when it became available, and the cheapest rate was $576 a month with a $4,000 deductible. We decided at the time that it was unaffordable.
We’ve been saving up and hubby has been working overtime to try to make sure we could afford insurance now. Our income is 358% of poverty, so we’re at the upper limit of being able to get subsidies. We weren’t even sure that we qualified for subsidies because I am insured with a qualified, affordable plan.
We had two visits with in-person assisters, one in October and one a few weeks ago. During both those visits, the state exchange web site (WA) was down, so we couldn’t really go through the application process. Plus, neither of them could tell us whether my insurance status would affect my husband’s eligibility or not.
So this week we were desperate, knowing we have one week left if we want him to be insured by Jan. 1. So a colleague told me I should contact my company’s insurance broker and ask for advice. She told me that no, my husband can’t qualify for the exchanges because of my status. However, she said, we can apply for insurance with insurance companies directly.
So we did. We found my husband a policy for $510 a month (still pricey, but we’ve been preparing for it), that has $10 copays on generics for his meds, 3 free doctor’s visits a year before the $1250 deductible and $30 copay kicks in, and vision included. Not a great deal, but better than we had hoped. The downside is that it seems that labwork is immediately applied to the deductible, and as a diabetic, he has a lot of lab work.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
Part of the problem is that, due to our completely crappy system, there are people who can’t/don’t pay their bills and end up declaring bankruptcy, so the “cash patients” are basically paying to cover for the people who didn’t pay.
gogol's wife
@schrodinger’s cat:
And that couldn’t have anything to do with the relentless series of screaming negative headlines in the Times, could it? But whenever there’s good news, it’s buried in the back. I’ve written to their Public Editor several times about this, and get no reply.
Is anyone else getting a constant notice about certification when you go to BJ? It’s driving me crazy.
kelly
Cover Oregon Success! My dearly beloved has a preexisting condition and we’re in our 50’s so the ACA is a big comfort to us. We’ll be saving just over $1000 a month. We’re not really poor but we have a very lumpy income stream that makes us look poor for 2014. By the way the wait time on COVER Oregon to confirm our new coverage was half that at Regence (Blue Cross) to end the old coverage on Dec 31.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: many of them also do plastic surgery and make very nice profits on nose jobs and facelifts.)
Which makes no sense. those are generally optional so they would not normally be covered by insurance anyway, right? I am not saying that some group is acting rationally, but you made it sound like their reaction had some rational basis.
catclub
@kelly: “Cover Oregon Success!”
That is real news! Cover Oregon seemed to be a huge clusterfuck. At least they got one enrollee insured.
bemused
@smintheus:
Yeah, I was being too hopeful again. All those Republican folks accept or plan to accept SS and Medicare and still vote for those who want to take it all away from them. They may sign up for ACA and be really happy with it and still vote for the people who clearly want to destroy it.
MomSense
@maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor:
Thank you!! I’m so happy I could kiss Obama Claus with or without the mistletoe.
@Richard Mayhew:
I signed up for a silver with cost sharing which turns it into a really good plan.
dr. bloor
@Amir Khalid: There’s certainly a greed factor involved, but cost shifting has a long history in health care. For a lot of hospitals it’s always been an attempt to cover costs for uninsured patients and shrinking reimbursements by insurers. If ACA works, another reason you’ll see less of big ticket stuff like that is because hospitals will be taking fewer losses on the uninsured.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: My husband’s allergy medication without insurance is more than $80 with insurance <$5, if I remember it correctly.
negative 1
My mother just signed up in Rhode Island — website here is kind of confusing but she did it over the phone no problem. She is saving over $300 per month and has better coverage (less deductibles) than she did before. Now she’ll never believe another republican lie again.
aimai
@Monala: Its weird to me that your husband doesn’t qualify for subsidized insurance on the exchanges–its true that you have employer healthcare but doesn’t adding him to your plan bump you out of the “affordable” healthcare which was part of that definition? If it costs you more than 9 percent of your income for that family plan don’t you both get to go on the exchanges?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@bemused:
Tim F.
@kelly: Wahoo! You could put the number of Covered Oregon successes in the double digits.
Seriously, WTF OR and MD. And RI from what I hear. Peeps need to find some web designers STAT.
Samuel Lockhart
Somebody here should mention how ACA will save EVERYONE money by reducing costs without reducing services. Planet Money ran a great piece about how hospitals are forcing doctors to pay attention to their wasteful (and sometimes careless) ways. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/12/18/255259894/episode-504-can-hospitals-save-money-by-making-doctors-squirm
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
Nose jobs can be covered by insurance, depending on what cause your doctor ascribes to them. There are plenty of people who got a rhinoplasty due to a deviated septum that probably wasn’t actually severe enough to require surgery, but they wanted a nose job and that was how they got insurance to pay for it.
kelly
@catclub: Cover Oregon has been a huge disappointment. Since Kitzhaber spent his time between governorships working on health care reform (and he’s an ER doc) I expected we’d shine. I’m so glad it staggered up off the floor and started to work.
Churchlady320
@Erin: The deductible is for medical treatment – $3000 per person (vs. Romneycare’s original $15,000 per person. Seriously.) You’d not use that unless the issue was serious, and then it would be $3000 for the patient – you’d NOT have to use up $12,000 for one person. With all the things covered that are no extra cost, this is far better than most private plans offered over the last 30 years. And it’s far better than the stingy flat subsidy no matter your premium. It’s tied to you and your family’s adjusted gross income not to the market.
Churchlady320
@fuckwit: I work with a number of African American people who are not computer savvy, and they had very little difficulty. It’s always good to call – but most folks are NOT having your level of frustration. Sorry that happened to you! Covered CA is a pretty useable site.
MattR
@aimai: This is why I cannot understand the Republicans who complained that the ACA was interfering with a major part of our econmy while at the same time complaining that the bill was too long. This shit is complex, as the scenario you were discussing with Monala demonstrates. A five page bill would leave plenty of cracks for people to slip through (and then Republicans would be complaining about that).
Monala
@aimai: Richard covered this a few weeks ago – if a spouse is covered by an employer and their coverage is considered affordable (less than 9% of income), then the family is considered to have affordable insurance, even if there is an uninsured spouse and covering them would bump you up over that 9%. (I read that and remembered hoping it wasn’t true, but alas…) We’re a family that falls right into that hole he’s talking about. And I can’t go into the exchanges because I was already covered by an affordable employer plan.
However, we were anticipating paying something in the $500 range. When we tried insurance calculators, we got quotes around $576, dropping to $493 with a subsidy. So $510 with no subsidy is pretty close to what we thought we would pay.
Churchlady320
@mainsailset: It kicks in if you’re at or below 250% of the federal poverty level, and it’s NOT shown to people over that. The fact she got it for $68 says she WAS below that level. The extra help is for those in working class families, not the more affluent.
Churchlady320
@Monala: I think the lab work SHOULD be free for most of his testing. Not positive, but keep checking since it’s potentially part of his ‘wellness’ issues.
burnspbesq
@bemused:
Both of them? Ya think?
Holden Pattern
1) Wait, what? There are dental plans in Covered CA? The user experience really was craptastic, per fuckwit above.
2) I signed up in the first week of November. Didn’t get my first notification from the insurance company until the second week of December.
3) Paid the bill right away, but still haven’t seen a receipt, nor has it shown up on my credit card bill.
4) Called the insurance company, and they said they weren’t charging anyone until they completed the enrollment.
5) I will call back again early next week.
My old individual market health insurance (premiums for which have gone up more than 600% over the last 10 years, and which had me locked in b/c of a pre-existing condition) terminated coverage as of 12/31 — it’s not going to be ACA-compliant, and they don’t want to make it so.
Richard Mayhew
@aimai: Correct, if one family member has employer coverager that is deemed qualified and affordable (<9.5% family income), then no one in the family can get subsidies even if family coverage is either not offered or would be the cost of a mortgage payment or three.
Richard Mayhew
@MomSense: Congrats!
Monala
@Churchlady320: If it is, that would be awesome.
WereBear
I’m just thinking of that little boy who was there when the President signed the bill. The one who might not have lost his mom if ACA. was already in place back then.
For that matter, I would not have lost my first husband, my business, and my house, in that slow and agonizing order.
West of the Cascades
@kelly: Totally agree re: Kitzhaber dropping the ball. The process has been the clunkiest imaginable, but I *believe* (with two verbal confirmations from Cover Oregon reps) that I am enrolled. Saving $110 per month in a plan that has the same deductible as the one I’m losing (United Health Care leaving the Oregon market, good riddance) and adds chiropractic, acupuncture and naturopathic coverage. But there is absolutely no reason it should have taken a month from the time I “applied” to the time I received confirmation of enrollment.
And I haven’t heard from the new insurance company yet — I am steeling myself to patience for eight more days and then am going to call Moda Health directly to find out if I’m in the system.
aimai
@Richard Mayhew: I beg your pardon, and monala’s, for continuing to misunderstand this. What a horrible hole for them to have left in the legislation. I hope this gets fixed as soon as we get a better congress.
aimai
@WereBear: I remember your situation. The passage of the ACA and, now, finally, its implementation make me think hard about just how accidental and fortuitous, or chancy and disastrous, things are for people. Can it really be the case that a few months difference and signing up for health insurance will be the difference between life and death, financial security and bankruptcy, for millions of people in this country? Yes. Absolutely.
Trollhattan
O/T Stramge bedfellows &/or Jindal polishes his wingnut bona fides.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25456372
This is your bestest frist step to the White House yet, Bobby!
Eric U.
I know someone that failed to sign up with multiple calls and attempts on the website. Something about proof of citizenship even though he was born in the U.S. to American citizen parents. He badly needs coverage, so this is unfortunate.
imonlylurking
I’m starting to wonder who is going to be the first to take advantage of so many people saving so much money due to Obamacare. Who is going to be the first to entice people into spending their Obamacare savings?
Jim Pharo
I’ve been trying to sign up in NY. First effort failed after 1 hour phone call determined that they were having a problem with income verification for those without regular jobs. (Seriously.) The call was after I had spent an hour trying to get throughout the questionnaire on the website, which was so incoherent and vague that filling it out is more art than science.
I tried again earlier today, but had my log-in credentials rejected — and the “Log-in failed” screen included some odd code comments in little red boxes that appeared to be failed Java commands (though I’m no programmer).
When I had someone on the phone, it was clear that the person, while very polite and courteous, had not been meaningfully trained on anything other than the very basics. We were looking things up in the ACA wiki together, for example.
Don’t know if we’ll end up with coverage or not. It’s certainly far cheaper to pay the penalty (about $800 vs. $17,000). Just don’t know if we have the bandwidth and/or persistence to get this done (raising a disabled child, two demanding jobs, living in America in 2013, etc.).
mak
Happy to hear all the success stories, but I’m still stuck in (secondary) verification hell. Identity has been verified, but when I get to the end of the application (Review & Sign), the signature box comes under a banner stating that “verification systems are temporarily unavailable” but never fear, they’ll be good to go within 24 hours. This started in mid October.
There are apparently quite a lot of us stuck in this loop. Have read that it may have something to do with the fact that my wife is a naturalized citizen, and thus may require some kind of verification from DHS. Or it may be that my kids may be eligible for CHIP, which in PA goes up to 300% FPI. Or it may just be bad luck. I do not know, and neither do the dozen or so customer service people (including a few supervisors) with whom I’ve spoken.
Upon their advice, I’ve started new applications and new accounts, and have tried at different times of the day, to no avail. Just can’t get past the last page of the application.
Tim F.
@mak: Sorry to hear that. Have you spoken to anyone on the phone help line?
Monala
@Eric U.: Why would this person need to prove it? When my husband applied, he just had to check Yes for US citizen, and enter his SSN.
Mnemosyne
@mak:
It seems like a majority of the intractable problems people run into are because either they or their spouse are naturalized citizens. Thanks, Republicans!
But it does sound like your best bet is to call and speak to an actual person to get it straightened out — the computer system has a hard time dealing with non-native born citizens.
CaseyL
I have finally submitted the application, but have not yet chosen or enrolled in a plan – because healthplanfinder in Washington State seems to be down more often that it’s up, and even when the site is “working,” it isn’t very functional.
Those of you in Washington state who’ve managed to actually sign up for a plan – what time of day did you log in? I’ve been trying repeatedly, but keep getting the Spinning Windmill of Eternity: can’t get info about brokers, navigators, or details about the plans themselves.
I did finally get through to an enrollment specialist, who said the site has been mostly down the last few days, and who could not recommend any time of day or night that would be a good time to try.
Maybe a BJer here has some advice?
Mnemosyne
@Eric U.:
Weird as this is going to sound, your friend should check with all of the credit agencies and make sure there hasn’t been any identity theft that he wasn’t aware of. If possible, he may also want to call the IRS and/or Social Security Administration and make sure there aren’t two of him under the same SSN (which could indicate that someone stole his SSN).
mak
@Tim F.: @Tim F.:
Yes, I’ve spoken to them many times (and in fact am on hold with one of them now). Some are better than others. Supervisors are typically more knowledgeable, though even they haven’t been able to get past that last screen (so far, at least).
Jaye
I signed myself and my husband up several weeks ago. Unfortunately, when the confirmations came, both plans (we signed up for two different ones) showed him as the insured. Covered CA confirmed via phone that this was a known bug. Hopefully this is fixed by the end of the year, because my previous insurer is pulling out of the CA individual market entirely.
FWIW, both people I spoke with at CoveredCA were extremely pleasant and appeared quite well informed. Almost made the 45 minute wait time to get a call answered worth it. almost.
David M
@CaseyL:
You don’t need to log in to get details about the plans, only to sign up for the plans, the window shopping seems to work well on the WA exchange. They had some down time the first part of December, but I think they’ve resolved those problems. I was just able to log in now.
Bill Arnold
@Amir Khalid:
A libertarian-flavored American wingnut would say that it’s their fault for not negotiating with the provider before using their services.
My libertarian cousin actually did this. He didn’t believe in insurance. Was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, told the hospital and doctors that he would pay Medicare rates and proved that he had the money. They accepted. (He died of it, but that’s the usual outcome with pancreatic cancer.)
Not sure what sort of negotiation he would have done while being rushed to the hospital with a heart attack.
Bill Arnold
@Richard Mayhew:
In a functioning democracy, this and any similar problems would be fixed with legislative patches. I know you've said this, but it remains mind-boggling.
(Republicans believe that the ACA should remain unpatched, Wondering how many Republicans use unpatched MS Wiindows on principle. :-)
Mnemosyne
@Bill Arnold:
IIRC, it was meant to try and make people keep their own employer’s insurance rather than putting the entire insurance burden on whoever’s employer offered the best insurance. I’m not quite sure what the best fix would be.
aimai
@Bill Arnold: Well, the joke was on them then! How lucky for him that his refusal to get health care and health insurance prior to the cancer didn’t cost him anything more than an early death.
Avi
Signed up for a platinum HMO plan through the Marketplace last week. I’m “initially enrolled,” which means I’m still waiting for Florida Blue to contact me; I’ll probably pay the storefront a visit tomorrow to see if the office people can tell me anything.
Sadly, no subsidies for me, but my premium and copays will be going down about 55% from what I’ve got now; I’ll have no deductible (which was killing me because I had to pay out of pocket for a battery of labs every three months); and I’m keeping my doctor.
Bart
@fuckwit: Oh please, they’ll vote for those fuckers again and again. Because taxes and blahs and gheys etc.
gussie
@burnspbesq: Thanks! Will do. Much appreciated.
Karen in GA
You sure? My adult niece constantly bitches about how she’s so sick, such a migraine, her stomach is killing her, she’s coughing all night, whatever other ailments she has. I asked her if she’d seen a doctor, she said, “No insurance.”
“Have you gone to healthcare.gov?”
No response.
Of course, her husband is a right-wing Obama-hating gun nut, and she’s following right along with him.
Some of these people will act against their own interests even if it means being sick, rather than risk proving Obama right.
mainsailset
@CaseyL: Casey, I finally got through at 5pm. Mornings and noon seem to be the worst. I figured people were getting home at 5 , would have a quick dinner and then jump onto their computers. The whirling windmill is truly annoying!
wvng
Signed up a week ago. WV Exchange, using healthcare.gov No problem after voiding my original application (which went in early November and supposedly was complete but wouldn’t allow me to compare plans for purchase) and starting over. Took an hour or two, and now waiting for invoice from Anthem. Called them today and was told we are in their system and the invoice should be mailed in the next few days. We will have much better insurance (high end Silver), with much lower deductible and copays than our current catastrophic policy, for ~$800/year less. Could have gone Bronze for even less. We are very pleased.
Betsy
@Karen in GA: it’s called secondary gain. The reward of kvetching about the problem is actually more emotionally satisfying than solving the problem.
gvg
As a college financial aid counselor I found out years ago that when people become naturalized citizens they drop off the INS database but the SS admin is not automatically notified that they are now citizens. They already have SS#’s before citizenship but there is no procedure for INS to tell the SS admin. There fore when a student does a FAFSA and checks citizen, the auto computer match does not come back confirmed. It turns out that a simple in person visit to any SS office in the country with new citizen paper will fix the problem forever. I used to advise students to tell their whole family to go down. Usually the entire family get naturalized together. I had this idea that they would pay into SS for years, retire, and discover their eligibility was in question.
It also turned out that US citizens born abroad w/ counselor issued birth certificates were not usually in the SS database. That usually meant children of soldiers. Again, take teh passport down to SS & show them.
It may be that this non data match is some peoples problem.
PhoenixRising
@mak: We had a similar set of issues that challenged the database’s verification capacities. Two self-employed parents whose unexpected ability to file as married for 2012 and 2013 put us in a new tax situation making our kid eligible for CHIP, which goes to 400% FPL where we live.
But there’s a complication: She derives her citizenship from our adoption of her completed abroad, per the Child Citizenship Act of 2000. So paperwork proving that Shortstack Phoung Phoenix (not her real name :) is also Phoung Rath (the baby who got the orphan visa from which her citizenship is derived) had to go to HHS in London, Kentucky for review.
We have the policy covering moms in hand, but of course our state’s Medicaid office hasn’t started “explaining” what we already know: that Medicaid is means-tested, not just income-based (the subsidies are income-only, vs household wealth in total as a means test). So we think we’re likely to have to up our BCBS monthly outlay by about $75 to add the kid to our (subsidized) policy. When it’s all cleared up I’ll report back.
mak
@gvg: gvg: Thank you for that, very helpful. We’ll be making the trek down to the local SS office post haste. Only wish I’d known this a year or two ago, before they shut down the little SS office conveniently located right in our tiny little burg.
@PhoenixRising: thank you for the insight. Alas, I haven’t been able to even reach the point where they’ve asked for verification. Now wondering if I shouldn’t just mail the application to KY so that it will reach a pair of human eyeballs. Of course, I’ve also heard that sending the app via snail mail causes its own set of difficulties.
jerry Grover
I have had the same error saying the verification system is unavailable since October no matter how many applications I do. My wife is a naturalized citizen, sounds like that is the problem based on what others have posted.