Yesterday, after multiple attempts over a series of days to enter my family's data and complete the application at healthcare.gov -- the website wouldn't verify my application. Actually, the website wouldn't even tell me by email or otherwise that my application was "incomplete". I had to go back in and re-enter my family's data several times. Then … I got the dreaded rolling ball symbol on the screen.
I called the help line, and spent another forty minutes on the phone, with a very nice man who had clearly undergone sensitivity training to be an intermediary between a disastrous health care reform roll out and civic disappointment, frustration, anger and despair. The phone agent read from a script, sprinkled with apologies delivered with unwavering sincerity.
Finally, after opening my application on his computer screen, my agent assured me that my application "went through" although neither of us could see any health care choices. Maybe that's just Florida and Gov. Rick Scott sticking the end of a wire coat hanger in the hard drive.
The customer service agent did try to get a supervisor to be involved -- I waited another fifteen minutes -- , but he couldn't clear his own phone help queue to get anyone on the line. This afternoon, I re-re logged on, or tried -- by the same password/login that I'd be using all along kept booting me back to the open login page. No message that my login failed. Just blank.
This morning I changed my password (why?) and succeeded in viewing that my application had moved from "in progress" to "submitted".
President Obama says that in time, health care reform will be viewed as his signature achievement. I agree. It is needed so desperately in the United States that one can almost feel the nation's big insurance companies pushing back as hard as they can. I have friends who did successfully enroll and are ecstatic at being able to sign up for affordable health care for the first time. Someday, I may be able to be ecstatic as well.
5 comments:
I started trying at about day 2. The site would not open with my email or password that I had started with. I then started over with a new email a month later and then everything worked. I told some cousins in Arkansas what I had done, and they tried the same thing. It worked! I know it doesn't make any sense, but it worked for 3 different people. I'm very happy with the plan I got.
On another note, with all the money the anti healthcare for everyone people have, why wouldn't they try to screw up the website.
The Obama roll out mess is an example of several really bad situations. First hire for competency. Many contracts, jobs, and major responsibilities are given for reasons other than expertise and competency. There may be some positions where performance can be fudged, and mediocrity allowed. But there are others that are high profile, performance is observed by all, and failure is not an option. It is a field where there are a lot of BSers, with people who say they can do things they can't do. You only put people on these projects who you know can perform. On this kind of project, you know MIT people and the military can do cutting-edge computer applications for the nation, so you put them on it. Now $600 million dollars later, we have massive incompetence, a nation full of people desperately trying to get on to get healthcare, and a two-seater design when a design for huge mack truck was needed.
Second situation is the lawyers who wrote the rules. They knew from the get-go they had written the regs to eliminate insurance policies in name only (IINOs). Yet they gave the President the impression that people could keep their old IINO policies. And allowed him to keep making those statements without clarification when they knew in fact it was not true.
You always have a plan B, anticipating problems in what if situations, and related solutions.
With administrative staff like this, a President does not need any enemies.
"one can almost feel the nation's big insurance companies pushing back as hard as they can." This is as factual as "if you like your current insurance plan you can keep it."
Truth is this is all (masterpiece) theater, insurance companies were appeased by forcing us self employed folks off the their "substandard plans" and into "higher quality" plans that cost 50% more and then some. Of course for some folks (not that many) there is a subsidy (aka a transfer payment from taxpayers to insurance companies). Those that receive the "subsidy" will in most (but not all) cases find themselves paying about the same out of pocket due to premium increases.
The website circus is a distraction that can be fixed quickly, but the bigger problem lies in this crony capitalistic welfare state (Corporate Behemoths included and are biggest beneficiaries)that will ruin this country. This is not a partisan issue just as corrosive and toxic as the Affordable Care Act (Orwellian doublespeak) was the TARP and FED Bailout by George W the only difference was who benefited ("Investment" Banksters).
From city halls to state legislatures all the way to the White House we have turned over the keys to our lives to politicians who with very few exceptions are pliable by big corporate contributors who not surprisingly are reaping the benefits of their "contributions" (more like investments) in political campaigns.
That Includes Saint Obama.
Thanks for telling it like it is, CATO. I voted for "Saint Obama" (LOL) in 2008, but voted for Jill Stein in 2012. I don't do Lesser of Two Evils any more.
I went on the website to shop, but quit after I was required to give my name, social security number, etc BEFORE I could shop. Why can't people just shop and browse without giving all that personal info?
I am as liberal as anyone on this blog, but this whole Obamacare plan seems like a complicated Rube Goldberg contraption to me. They should have just expanded Medicare. Obama was against this crazy individual mandate system when he was running for president in 2007-08. He should have stuck to his principles.
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