Thanks to the many folks who answered my last thread. You won’t mistake me for Nate Silver, but I think the following points are worth sharing.
* Nearly everyone (around 90%) had some sort of problem with their websites, with clueless call-in staff or both. However,
* …of those who went ahead with it, only three people, around 10%, still have trouble signing up for insurance. At least one sounds like a problem that other people have fixed either by creating a new email and login ID or clearing out cookies.
* America badly needs a thumbnail guide for bypassing the most common problems. A LOT of you got your plan by being tech-savvy or finding a work-around that the average user should not be expected to know. The guide should include website tricks like the above, how to find your plan on Sherpa and then go directly to the insurer if necessary, and how to know when your insurer is jerking you around (plus what to do about it). By necessity someone should host it on the web since problems crop up and get fixed on a daily basis.
* Notwithstanding the usual bullshit behavior from insurers themselves, California has nothing but happy customers. You guys also seem quite happy with your experience in Minnesota, Kentucky and Washington.
* Maryland, WTF? Also Rhode Island. These seem like states that ought to know what they are doing, yet they both really tied their shoes together with the Affordable Care Act.
* In just about every story that involves navigators, they started October lost in the woods but got a lot more helpful over time.
To summarize, it sounds like almost everyone who wants care today can get it. The worst bugs have been squashed but clearly some annoying ones remain. I would hardly let Obama off the hook, in fact some folks in DC, Maryland and Rhode Island need to clean out their desks, but folks who show up for the inevitable deadline crush will most likely get what they need. In a year or two nothing else will matter.
If you still have a problem, please describe it in the thread below. Odds are pretty good that someone here encountered the same thing and found a workaround to solve it.
srv
Wish I could talk, but across so many states you are bound to have some real outliers. And they did themselves proud.
David in NY
What was the total sample?
Anya
What is Illinois’ story? Haven’t seen anything in the news about their implementation successes or failures.
scav
Other thing to maybe mention is, “Obama” (meaning, there actually is a team in operation) managed to get a national scale system up and functioning under some high loads. There could (for politeness and scientific niceties only) be some other factors / constraints operating here, that, yes, should entirely have been allowed for during planning stages. Enough blame to go around, but cripes.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
OT: I’m in San Francisco, sitting in a park about 4 blocks from where Obama is holding a fundraiser. I can hear the be-megaphoned protesters, and they’re yelling at him for being insufficiently socialist. Sigh. We need a better class of stupid people – on both sides.
ceece
My sister in law in Oregon had a terrible time with the website (some media were saying that NOBODY has been able to use the oregon website yet, it is so defective) but had no trouble signing up using the phone registration. They only get a small subsidy, but they are going to save a ton of money over their crappy small business plan.
MomSense
Not sure if y’all saw this piece written by a medical student in Texas who works at a free clinic.
http://www.texasobserver.org/a-galveston-med-student-describes-life-and-death-in-the-safety-net/
NobodySpecial
@Anya: Illinois is using the federal system with Comcastic ability on the interwebs, if you get what I mean. I’ve gotten to the point of picking a plan, but I plan on visiting my network hospital and asking lots of questions first. Oh, and robbing a bank to pay for it.
? Martin
@Anya:
Illinois is a hybrid state/fed exchange, so at this point you need to lump them under the healthcare.gov experience.
gbear
My cats don’t like each other.
? Martin
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
You’re in San Francisco, what do you expect? It’s a city full of people that would complain that Paris is too right-wing.
Let me put it another way – how many of the protesters are lacking an article of clothing that every other city would consider to be required?
? Martin
@ceece: That’s not quite what they were saying. People can submit applications, but the applications aren’t able to be processed by the insurers, so people are in limbo.
NotMax
Reminder that everyone has until March 31 for this open enrollment period.
125 shopping days until cut-off.
gelfling545
I have just recently had rousing “conversations” with 2 people I know who hadn’t done anything about insurance yet because “the website doesn’t work; everybody knows that!” except that they both live here in New York State. They are both perfectly competent people outside of anything to do with government or politics. The willful ignorance is extreme and not a little frightening.
JoyfulA
We called today, figuring that our combination of unusual circumstances wouldn’t fit the website, even if we did get on, which we didn’t last month. So we were upfront asked if we’d answer questions rating the service we got after the call, and we said we would, after which we were put on hold for about 5 minutes.
After the hold, we were asked to rate our service with an automated system. Of course, all 1s for dissatisfied because there was no service.
So we went to the website to look through the plans in our area. We saw several PPO golds, ranging in price from $231 at my husband’s age (I have insurance) to $500+. There must be some difference to account for price differences, but there was no further information I could find.
Because 3 of them were from Highmark, we went to the Highmark website. One plan had utterly no copays or deductibles; a second had what seemed to be rather high ones, like $20 for a GP visit, $40 for a specialist, etc. I figured the third would be in the middle, but it was a duplicate of the second.
So I clicked the chat button and explained the problem; I was apparently deemed an idiot. “Tom” told me to got to X website, click #3, scroll down, etc., which, when I did it, turned out to be exactly what I had already done. And two of the plans were still the same, which I told Tom, who advised me to look at the plan brochures rather than the pdf. Of course, the plan brochures would not open.
Tomorrow, we plan to go to one of the face-to-face places, which I wouldn’t know about, except that our local Democratic club handed out the website, phone number, and f2f locations at last month’s meeting.
I am not a very patient person.
MomSense
I did have a problem with the website because I entered a social security number incorrectly so I had to call a navigator and then it took 24 hours to update the system with the correct information. After that it was 25 minutes to get to the place where I can see all the options. I am probably going to pick from one of the six silver plans available to me. I get a subsidy! The premiums for the silver plans range from $100 – 270 per month and the deductible ranges from 2,500 – 1,000 (higher premium, lower deductible). Max out of pocket $2,000. There is a $10 co-pay for doctor visits and $45 for specialists but this is doable. Before I had to drop my insurance I was paying $1,600 per month and had much higher deductible, co-pays and out of pocket max.
Bonus is that since my doctor became part of a larger practice, he is in network. Also, too I think Kaiser estimated a 340 per month premium but the actual price was cheaper. Not sure why.
Tomorrow I am going to look at dental plans and will let you know what I find out.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@? Martin:
None, as it turned out. There’s an inverse correlation between weather and ostentatiously inappropriate nudity here, and apparently it’s too nice out to be nekkid. There was one idiot with a megaphone on one side of the block yelling about sociamalism, and a whole bunch on the other side telling O not to approve the Keystone pipeline (with which I fervently agree). So that’s a remarkably good stupid:serious ratio for us.
Fuzzy
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: I live in the Bay Area too, and what annoys me is that 4 people with a sign will attract a TV news crew. The unwritten rule should be minimum 300 and 30 signs for TV coverage.
Southern Beale
Sorry to post OT but I’m hoping blogs and social media can step in and help the Humane Society of the Delta in Helena, Arkansas, which is basically a suburb of Memphis. Over Halloween some fucking sickos broke in to the facility and used their smaller dogs as “bait” for fight dogs, there at the property, then left them for dead. Fortunately they survived but the facility needs money for a fence to keep something like this from happening again. Here’s the story.
geg6
Haven’t come across anyone yet who is talking about trying to sign up here in PA, where our current governor, Tom “One-Term” Corbett, has done everything in his power to make it impossible to access any type of health care or health insurance. You know, the state that, in order to do any sort of repairs to the abominable roads and bridges in the commonwealth, has just increased gas taxes 9 cents a gallon and increased fees for drivers licenses, auto registration and minor traffic violations (from $25 to over $100!!) but will not in any way tax or place any sort of fees on Marcellus Shale companies. There are something like a half a million people here without health insurance and many more under-insured, but what the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette told me is that only about 50,000 people have signed up for insurance on healthcare.gov so far. Of course, no Medicaid expansion here, either. So that would be a large part of the problem, I’m thinking.
RyanSyp
Sign, I tried again today it’s still broken for me. I get almost all the way through the application process, but one of the save and continue buttons doesn’t work.
Winnie
That’s a real shame about Pennsylvania. I grew up in Pittsburgh, (BTW I DID manage to enroll today on the Maryland site,) and I bet a lot of my former classmates/friends/neighbors could benefit from ACA, IF they were able to sign up-and sadly I also know of a lot of people in the area for whom Medicaid expansion would have been a GODSEND.
PopeRatzo
What’s not to be happy about, when you’re getting Medicaid and it’s not costing you a cent?
I’d like to see a little more success signing up young healthy people. But I don’t blame them for not signing up in large numbers, since nothing we’ve seen over the past decade and a half inspires any confidence that the US government is capable of running anything beyond a very expensive (and misused) military. If I’m a 27 year facing a quarter-million in school loans, I’m not going to spend a nickel on Obamacare until I have absolutely no choice and/or a fine that is more expensive than the high-deductible insurance. Why would they even believe that these fines are going to be enforced or that the individual mandate is not going to be further extended or another Republican wave election doesn’t make Obamacare even more of a mess?
The problem isn’t the website. It’s that the product is just sub-standard by comparison to what most civilized people get to have.
JoyfulA
@geg6: I did, just above.
Chyron HR
Yeah, but the website cost
$360 billion$70 milliontreefiddysome amount of money, which is flagrant theft because I can make a Geocities page for free. BOONDOGGLE! HEARINGS! IMPEACH!Origuy
@Fuzzy:
Unfortunately, any protest much bigger than that attracts the Black Bloc anarchists, and the TV coverage focuses on them.
MomSense
@PopeRatzo:
Two of the people I am covering are young adults. Also, too–the plans are reasonable and the cost of prescriptions including birth control are very expensive without insurance. If a 22 year old woman currently has to pay out of pocket $60 a month for birth control, paying $40 more per month and getting access to wellness visits, a doctor, antibiotics for strep throat, etc makes financial sense. Young people are not paying 0 for health care now.
jenn
@Southern Beale: Oh, Jesus. Forgive me for not clicking through. I’m already in tears from the Texas Observer article, I can’t quite hack more details. But thanks for the heads-up, so I can google up their address.
It is amazing, though, just how much people can suck.
Belafon
I don’t have to go looking for insurance, but I have noticed that the pharmacies here in Texas are putting up signs saying they can help figure out what your options are for health care. That includes the Wal-Mart pharmacy.
Belafon
Someone help: I’ve been moderated. Next thing you know, I’ll be slightly right of center.
Stella B
@PopeRatzo: Well we’re middle aged healthy people with lots of money and we had no trouble signing up for unsubsidized care in CA. We had to pay for the first month, so it was stupid to do it so early, but what’s done is done. Does that count?
rda909
If only the Obummer-bots who made this website had planned ahead and built in a few month buffer time to work out kinks, before everything taking effect in January! Just like Dear Leader Obummerloser, these morans are so incompetent! And don’t even get me started on these clowns and how they could’ve eliminated the pre-existing condition clauses, and kept kids on their parent’s plans until 26 years of age, if only they weren’t so stooooopit!
Oh. Wait.
Van
Here’s a website that has listings of the plans that’s more complete then sherpa: http://www.valuepenguin.com
Elizabelle
OT: cool movie alert tonight: “Days of Being Wild” by Wong Kar Wai, terrific Chinese director. Starring a young Tony Leung (1991).
8:00 p Eastern, Turner Classic Movies.
Did anyone else see this year’s “The Grandmaster”? Loved it.
Watching Wong Kar Wai flicks is good for one’s health.
Mnemosyne
@PopeRatzo:
Fix’d. As usual, you have absolutely no clue that 27-year-old women are going to be racing to sign up for this because avoiding a disastrous pregnancy and preventing cervical cancer is more important than having $100 more in beer money for the month.
Yes, it’s too bad that 27-year-olds are too young to vote and therefore can’t make any impact on who gets elected.
Gin & Tonic
@PopeRatzo: If I’m a 27 year facing a quarter-million in school loans
If you’re in fact 27 and have $250k in uncollateralized non-dischargeable debt, then first I’ll question your financial decision-making capabilities.
maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor
I gather you’ve never visited Quahog Central.
Doofus
@Anya: Illinois is looking better, especially over the last week. Only commenting on the numbers coming out though. I am assuming that means the website is getting better, but I don’t know what workarounds people are having to go through to get those applications through.
KS in MA
@MomSense: Rick Perry should be put under the jail.
aimai
@PopeRatzo: In what sense is the “product sub standard?” Its literally private health insurance, just like the rich people get. Even medicaid is basically just being seen by doctors–the same ones who see people with private insurance. Whether the exchanges are up and running or not has no effect on the quality of the insurance plans being offered. And what is different, of course, from before are the significant change:
people with preexisting conditions must be covered
children must be able to stay on until 26
basic services are standardized and can’t be denied
busted caps on lifetime coverage
out of pocket limits
Can you explain to us whether you have the faintest idea what you are talking about when you say its a “sub standard product?”
aimai
@MomSense: Thank you so much for linking to that story. My god. You can know and know and know how screwed up our country is but until you read that doctor’s account of what is happening in Texas you simply can’t really grasp it in all its horror.
Miss Bianca
The CO website, Connect for Health Colorado, doesn’t seem to be too bad. However, in order to apply for Medicaid (and be denied, the necessary first step in order to shop for subsidized plans), you have to leave the website, be bumped over to Social Services, and then navigate back. Here at the library, we had an independent insurance broker, as well as the health navigator, available to help people through the process, and I’m really glad we did, because I am far from computer illiterate and I had quit halfway thru’ the process the first time. Now, tho’, having been rejected for Medicaid on the grounds that I “hadn’t applied for medical benefits”, I am feeling a little less confidence in the process. Really? The great state of Colorado thinks I wasn’t applying for medical benefits, and I thought I was? This seems like a little bit of a problem to me. On the other hand, I was able to cruise the network and I do think I might – just barely – be able to afford a plan. If I quit one of my jobs, I’ll be eligible for enough of a discount to make it actually affordable, and I have only JUST BEGUN TO SHOP!
All of this sounds like I’m griping, which I’m really not. Things could be so much worse.
Another Holocene Human
@Southern Beale: That is sick. Some similar stuff happened at the county pound here, not quite so egregious as what you describe. Basically some fight dogs had been impounded and these people broke into the facility to steal back “their” dogs so they could play pokemon with real live animals. Just sick.
Another Holocene Human
@Winnie: You can’t call it Pennsytucky when Kentucky has it and PA don’t.
brendancalling
Update: I got the plans I am eligible, and acclearly stated subsidy of $61 per month. But when I called IBX to inquire about the specifics of the cheapest plan available to me, they told me my subsidy was $21 per month. They said that the number provided by healthcare.gov is completely wrong. then, I got in touch with online advisor at health.gov,who told me that IBX was wrong. given the incompetence of the rollout of Obamacare, but also given the corruption of the health insurance industry, I am completely unsure who to trust. This is fucking ridiculous.
brendancalling
@geg6: see my comment above.
TriassicSands
@MomSense:
When I read articles like that one, I try to imagine how a person (Governor Perry, for example) can be so utterly lacking in human decency. The sad fact is that the Modern Republican Party is full of people so selfish, so devoid of empathy, and so willing to let people die or suffer financial ruin that one has to stretch the definition of human to include them.
The GOP has become a club for sociopaths.
David
@Winnie: You really should call. It’s been much better for me.
brendancalling
@PopeRatzo: ding ding ding!!
Took me a month to get the shitty website to work for me, and I cant get a straight answer on premiums.
mclaren
Shorter version: the “Obamacare is a trainwreck that’s starting to unravel” is pure bullshit, complete Republican propaganda on the level of “the moon landing was a fake.” The glitches involved in signing up are milder than you’d expect from something pedestrian like filling out your estimated quarterly income tax online.
Triassic Sands above remarks:
Which means that he fails to understand that Republicans today have an essentially Leninist mindset. Their attitude since the Reagan maladministration has been: The worse, the better. The more they can make the U.S. system of governnance break down, the better they think they’ll fare when they step in to pick up the pieces in the wreckage.
Essentially, Republicans today are like Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the 1968 Bond film You Only Live Twice. They’re trying to blow up the world in the hope that they’ll be the dominant power when the catastrophe has ended. All the Republicans are missing right now is a hollow volcano and a white cat to pet.
buskertype
My wife and I got on the website last night (after a couple false starts back in October) and signed up to get health insurance. The only problem with the website was that we couldn’t see the lists of what providers are included in the network, also it wouldn’t accept credit card payment. We decided to go ahead and enroll anyhow.
For me, this will be the first time in my adult life that I’ve had health insurance, and it feels good. I’m 32 and healthy, but starting to realize I won’t be that way forever. About 3 months ago I went to the emergency room for an ear infection and 2 weeks later I got a bill for $500 in the mail. That’s about what I’ll be paying for a year’s coverage after the subsidy.
chefloveshiking
I tried to sign up in Maine through the federal exchange. They could not verify that I exist. I called the contractor, they ran a credit check on me. Asked if there was a reason I had no credit history. I said there should be no credit history. No loans/credit cards. Call DHHS. Central switch board. The person I talked to said to mail something(copy of drivers license,SS card, ect… to a DHHS office in KY. No cover letter form, no particular office/person. I should hear back in two weeks if I exist. I was also told I would get confirmation from my mailed application in two weeks. I mailed it October 28. I now have account through the web site but need to be verified. I have been using a navigator but she says I have to wait for the federal government to verify me. So, I wait.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I just became a Maryland resident a year and a couple months ago, so I’m not a long timer. But, the longer I reside here the more I’m learning that Maryland government has a long history of inefficiency and incompetence from the county level on up. So, that’s probably the issue. Here in Montgomery County, which is rife with policy experts that work for the federal government, Silver Spring just had a fiasco with a new transit hub. Lots of expertise to draw on, total contract management failure.
We also had a boondogle whereby a new “The Filmore” opened in downtown Silver Spring. This would be good except that the place is run by a private outfit but the deal was heavily subsidized with public funds. The county spent $10 million to create the new Filmore, and charges the venue operator $100,000 per year in rent – after 10 years the first million will be paid off! The public gets virtually nothing out of it but the County employees get a set number of free tickets to every concert. These are just two examples in what is considered the best-run populous county in the State. My guess is the State government is just as incompetent and corrupt, and hence the exchange doesn’t work.
Mike R.
I had some problems with the online sign up in Rhode Island at the beginning of November but I was told it was due to problems with the federal database. I’ve since talked to people who tell me it’s much better.
As I mentioned in the earlier thread it’s not a big deal for me to visit the Healthsource RI center. You can make an appointment (I did) or they’ll take walk ins, they told me what documentation to bring and overall it was a very productive experience. I waited about 15 minutes and the young lady who I met with was very knowledgeable and personable and after about 20 minutes I was on my way with my daughter covered after many years without any coverage.
I think that sometimes the enormity of what is being undertaken here isn’t given enough consideration. It’s groundbreaking, incredibly complex and has been sabotaged relentlessly. Let me say that having every member of my family covered makes the relative inconvenience of the process worthwhile. The press in this country should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for the way they have neglected the benefits of the program and solely focused on a relatively few negative experiences.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
Okay, so I’ve been trying since the first week of Nov. and can’t get through enrollment. I’m in AZ and have completed my online application at healthcare.gov. I made the mistake of trying to compare different groupings in my family to see if individual plans would be more affordable than a family plan but they never got that working, so I gave up on that and decided I’d just go with the family plan.
Now I’ve selected the insurance that I want and when I click the Enroll button nothing happens. Nothing. Ever. I’ve tried all the various help numbers they provide. The Chat help says call Technical help. Technical help says that it’s a known bug so I have to wait or call to enroll over the phone. So I wait a week and still the issue is not fixed. I finally gave up on the website today and called to enroll only to be told that their systems just went down too. So they could see my app was completed but nothing else. So I guess I wait some more.
If anyone else has experienced this Enroll button problem and found a solution, please let me know. I’m getting pretty frustrated. I’m not pissed at the Pres tho. I’m angry at frigging AZ for not setting up their own healthcare exchange.