Some delays, but health insurance signups better than last year

Published 4:12 pm, Saturday, November 15, 2014

WASHINGTON - The health insurance marketplace opened for business Saturday and performed much better than last year, but many consumers reported long, frustrating delays in trying to buy insurance and gain access to their own accounts at HealthCare.gov.

Thousands of people attended hundreds of enrollment events around the country at public libraries, churches, shopping malls, community colleges, clinics, hospitals and other sites. Insurance counselors and federal, state and local officials said they were trying to juggle two tasks - enrolling more of the uninsured and renewing coverage for those who already had it.

Some of the problems became evident on Saturday just as Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of health and human services, was visiting a community health center in Manassas, Va.

People there were having a hard time logging into their accounts, retrieving old passwords and proving they were who they said they were - a process known as identity proofing, which also vexed many people last fall. Some did complete their applications at the Manassas clinic on Saturday, but it often took them 90 minutes.

The insurance exchanges, where consumers can compare and select health plans, are a centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act. Burwell said 23,000 people had completed online applications in the first eight hours after HealthCare.gov opened on Saturday morning.

When the federal exchange opened last fall, the website collapsed under the pressure of millions of would-be users, and it was barely functional for a couple of months. The problems required emergency repairs and an overhaul of the site.

On Saturday, the fixes appeared to be making the application process much easier for some people.

In Augusta, Maine, Emily Brostek, an enrollment counselor, said she had helped a friend sign up for a new plan through HealthCare.gov with no problems.

'We were in and out in 30 minutes,' said Brostek, the executive director of Consumers for Affordable Health Care, a nonprofit group.

Emily Black Bremer, the president of the Missouri Association of Health Underwriters, used the federal website to help clients on Saturday and said it seemed to be working. But Bremer said she had to spend extra time with clients and call the federal marketplace to resolve password problems that locked people out of their accounts.

The problems appeared to come as a surprise to federal officials.

Aaron Albright, a spokesman at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said, 'The vast majority of users are having a smooth experience during the first day of open enrollment.'

Open enrollment started as the Obama administration was facing the prospect of new attacks on the health care law from a Republican-controlled Senate, as well as from Republicans in the House. In addition, the administration is mapping its strategy for another showdown over the law in the Supreme Court.

The administration says that as of last month, 7.1 million people were enrolled in private health plans purchased through federal and state exchanges. Burwell estimated that a total of 9.1 million people will have marketplace coverage at the end of next year.

People who take no action this fall will have their coverage automatically renewed in the same or similar health plans. Consumers must select a plan by Dec. 15 to have coverage by Jan. 1. But they have until Feb. 15 to sign up for coverage that will begin in March. Lower-income people can enroll in Medicaid at any time.

Thirty-seven states are using the federal exchange. They include Florida, Georgia and Texas, which together account for about one-fourth of the nation's uninsured. Other states, including California, run their own insurance exchanges.