Some New Frustrations as Health Exchange Opens
WASHINGTON - The health insurance marketplace opened for business on Saturday and performed much better than last year, but some 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.
Consumers 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 people did complete their applications at the Manassas clinic on Saturday, but it often took them 90 minutes.
Some people were unable to finish what they started, so they left the clinic with plans to return at another time.
The insurance exchanges, where consumers can compare and select health plans, are a centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act. Ms. Burwell said 23,000 people had completed online applications in the first eight hours after HealthCare.gov, the federal website, opened on Saturday morning.
In Washington State, officials had to take the state-run exchange offline shortly after it began accepting applications on Saturday morning. The system was not correctly determining tax subsidy amounts, said Bethany Frey, a spokeswoman.
Enrollment counselors in Alabama, Florida, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas, all of which rely on the federal exchange, reported mostly smooth experiences.
'The website was functioning perfectly all day,' said Lauren Banks, chief policy and advocacy officer at AIDS Alabama, a nonprofit group that has a federal grant to help people enroll. 'Today is what we hoped for a year ago. It's a new start.'
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, Me., 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 Ms. Brostek, the executive director of Consumers for Affordable Health Care, a nonprofit group.
There were no spinning wheels or frozen screens, Ms. Brostek said, recalling the complications that tormented consumers last fall. The difference, she said, is 'like night and day.'
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 Ms. 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.
Similar problems frustrated Lorena Ortiz, 40, of Woodbridge, Va., who tried to switch plans in a conference room at the clinic that Ms. Burwell visited on Saturday. Ms. Ortiz had signed up for coverage in the first enrollment period, but could not remember the password for her account on HealthCare.gov.
She and a certified application counselor, Kathleen May, spent an hour trying to retrieve Ms. Ortiz's old password - even making a call to the HealthCare.gov call center - to no avail. They waited for a new password to come to Ms. Ortiz's email address, but it never did.
Then they tried creating a new account. At first that did not work, either, so they tried using a different email address for Ms. Ortiz. When Ms. Burwell walked into the conference room to greet clients, Ms. May and Ms. Ortiz did not even look up.
They finally succeeded in creating a new account for Ms. Ortiz with a different email address. But then they could not link her old health plan to her new account.
Other counselors who sought help from the federal call center were told to call back because the website was having 'technical issues.'
Kelly D. Fristoe, an insurance agent in Wichita Falls, Tex., said the federal website appeared to be working for new applicants. But he said: 'There's a major problem for people trying to re-enroll. When we try to log in to access their accounts, we get a message that says the login information is incorrect. In every re-enrollment situation today, we have had to reset the user name and password.'
The problems appeared to come as a surprise to federal officials.
In his weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday, President Obama said it would be easy for people to sign up. In a news conference after the Republican romp on Election Day, Mr. Obama said: 'We're really making sure the website works super well before the next open enrollment period. We're double- and triple-checking it.'
In Edgewater, Fla., Mary D. Fischetti reported a different concern. In an interview, she said she had returned to HealthCare.gov after learning on Friday that her current plan would no longer be offered in her region. Her insurance now costs $67 a month, after a federal subsidy is taken into account, she said; the insurer suggested a comparable plan that would be $192 a month, after the subsidy.
'I don't want to be stuck paying that much,' said Ms. Fischetti, a retired office manager. 'So I'm going to have to start all over again.'
To those who already have coverage, Ms. Bremer, in Missouri, offered a bit of advice: 'Rates are increasing, plans are being added and discontinued, and benefits within plans are changing. Consumers who do not take an active role in evaluating their benefits and subsidies may find themselves unpleasantly surprised in 2015, or at the very least paying more than they have to.'
The administration says that as of last month, 7.1 million people were enrolled in private health plans purchased through federal and state exchanges. Ms. 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 beginning in March. Lower-income people can enroll in Medicaid at any time.
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