Caveat Emptor! Insurance Companies Warn Obamacare Web Site NOT Working

Yesterday the White House declared "mission accomplished," Healthcare.gov, the Obamacare website was now working (80% worth).

Jeff Zients, the White House official appointed to fix the problem-plagued HealthCare.gov since its disastrous rollout last month, said the site is “night and day from what it was on Nov. 1." 

President Obama's partners in the Obamacare mess, the insurance companies are saying, not so fast, the website is not working, at least when it comes to transferring information to them. And if a person buys one of their policies and if they don't receive the information, the person isn't insured.

The problem is that so-called back end systems, which are supposed to deliver consumer information to insurers, still have not been fixed. And with coverage for many people scheduled to begin in just 30 days, insurers are worried the repairs may not be completed in time.

“Until the enrollment process is working from end to end, many consumers will not be able to enroll in coverage,” said Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group.

The issues are vexing and complex. Some insurers say they have been deluged with phone calls from people who believe they have signed up for a particular health plan, only to find that the company has no record of the enrollment. Others say information they received about new enrollees was inaccurate or incomplete, so they had to track down additional data — a laborious task that would not be feasible if data is missing for tens of thousands of consumers.

In still other cases, insurers said, they have not been told how much of a customer’s premium will be subsidized by the government, so they do not know how much to charge the policyholder.

According to the reports, insurance companies have gotten customer calls asking for their insurance card after signing up for a policy via Healthcare.gov, but the company was never informed that the customer purchased insurance.

“Somehow people are getting lost in the process,” the insurance executive said. “If they go to a doctor or a hospital and we have no record of them, that will be very upsetting to consumers.”

So where does the "mission accomplished" come from?

This is the administration where the DOJ investigates itself, where the State Department runs an investigation on Benghazi without interviewing the Secretary of State, and the head of the NSA appoints the people on a commission to investigate the NSA, of course they would have the people charged with fixing a failed website grading their own performance.

Healthcare.gov is not fixed from the standpoint of the insurance companies, nor has the security infrastructure been fixed, but that doesn't stop the Administration from praising itself.

Caveat emptor!