Do you know anyone that has been able to get past all of the glitches and sign up for health insurance using one of the Obamacare websites? Thousands of applications have been “started”, but the mainstream media has been desperately searching for someone that has actually been able to successfully get enrolled and so far they haven’t been able to find a single example. The Obama administration had been promoting the story of one 21-year-old student from Georgia, but it turns out that his “success story” was a fraud and he was not actually successful in signing up for health insurance yet. So exactly what in the world is going on here? Certainly a few of the millions of visitors to these websites must have successfully signed up for health insurance, right? In the end, whether a handful of Americans have been able to sign up for health insurance or not is not the real issue. The real issue is that the launch of the most highly touted health law in U.S. history has been an epic fail.
The Obama administration has been so desperate to show that the Obamacare health insurance exchanges are working that even Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, tweeted the news story about the 21-year-old student down in Georgia getting enrolled in Obamacare. Unfortunately for the Obama administration, the story was not actually true…
The 21-year-old student from Georgia was cited in multiple articles as being one of the few, the proud, the successful to signed up for insurance through a federal exchange.
On his Facebook page, Chad Henderson bragged about being interviewed by “The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chattanooga Times Free Press, The Huffington Post, Enroll America, and Politico,” along with several local TV affiliates.
His story supposedly was proof that for all their glitches and problems – and the ambivalence of young people – the new health insurance exchanges were working after all.
Except it seems like it was all a lie.
So how many Americans have actually enrolled in Obamacare at this point?
The Obama administration claims that they do not have the numbers.
According to CNN, approximately 52,000 health insurance applications had been “started” as of Friday…
As of Friday, around 52,000 insurance applications have been started online on the sites of the 24 states that are operating their own exchanges, based on CNN’s own survey.
And according to the Wall Street Journal, large health insurance companies say that only “hundreds” of Americans have enrolled so far…
So far, Web-traffic problems are allowing only a small trickle of buyers, said John Gorman, chief executive of Gorman Health Group, an insurance-industry consulting firm with clients selling policies on the exchanges.
Large insurers have seen enrollment figures totaling in the hundreds each, said Sumit Nijhawan, chief executive of Infogix Inc., a data-integrity firm that works with such insurers as WellPoint Inc., Aetna Inc. and Cigna Corp.
Incredibly, only about 1 out of every 100 applications being submitted on the Obamacare health exchanges contain enough information to get an applicant successfully enrolled in a health insurance plan…
It’s a batting average that won’t land the federal marketplace for Obamacare into the Healthcare Hall of Fame.
As few as 1 in 100 applications on the federal exchange contains enough information to enroll the applicant in a plan, several insurance industry sources told CNBC on Friday. Some of the problems involve how the exchange’s software collects and verifies an applicant’s data.
“It is extraordinary that these systems weren’t ready,” said Sumit Nijhawan, CEO of Infogix, which handles data integrity issues for major insurers including WellPoint and Cigna, as well as multiple Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliates.
Talk about a colossal disaster.
So why is this happening?
Why can’t more people get enrolled?
Well, the number one reason people can’t get signed up are the monumental technical failures. For example, just check out what happened when a reporter from Georgia spent all day trying to sign up for Obamacare…
Jaye Watson of 11Alive News in Atlanta spent an entire workday trying to sign up online for Obamacare, and she, like millions of others around the country, encountered error messages, hold-ups and delays in the online marketplace.
While she waited, she called the 800 number for Obamacare and was asked to participate in a survey about her customer service experience. After being put on hold for several minutes without speaking to anyone, the automated survey kicked in and asked her how she would rate the time it took to reach a customer service representative.
“Well, I haven’t gotten through to one,” Watson said.
“Thank you again for calling the health insurance marketplace. Goodbye,” the machine said.
Watson laughed derisively.
Another news organization has been detailing the nightmare that one person in Pennsylvania has been enduring in her attempt to get signed up for Obamacare. The following is what happened when she contacted “Live Chat” in order to get some answers to her questions…
[4:09:56 pm]: Thanks for contacting Health Insurance Marketplace Live Chat. Please wait while we connect you to someone who can help.
[4:09:59 pm]: Please be patient while we’re helping other people.
[4:10:30 pm]: Please be patient while we’re helping other people.
[4:11:00 pm]: Please be patient while we’re helping other people.
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[4:30:27 pm]: Welcome! You’re now connected to Health Insurance Marketplace Live Chat.Thanks for contacting us. My name is PGSTX0534. To protect your privacy, please don’t provide any personal information, like Social Security Number, or any other sensitive medical or personal information.
[4:30:51 pm]: PGSTX0534
Hello, how may I help you today?
[4:31:12 pm]: Alice
My information is not recording correctly in the summary of my application
[4:31:35 pm]: Alice
I have tried to edit it multiple times and it is still wrong
[4:32:21 pm]: PGSTX0534
Thanks for your interest in the Health Insurance Marketplace. We have a lot of visitors trying to use our website right now. That is causing some glitches for some people trying to create accounts or log in. Keep trying, and thanks for your patience. We’ll continue working to improve the site so you can get covered
[4:32:40 pm]: Alice
what does that mean?[4:32:52 pm]: Alice
It says my application is “in Progress”[4:33:12 pm]: Alice
Does that mean it is not completed and I can continue to try to edit it?[4:33:55 pm]: Alice
Hello??[4:34:14 pm]: PGSTX0534
Thank you. One moment please while I look that up.[4:36:19 pm]: PGSTX0534
The only way we can see your application is you will have to call The Health Insurance Marketplace Call Center at 1-800-318-2596. We are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to assist you.[4:36:47 pm]: Alice
What does the Chat Service do then?She received no response to her last question.
This kind of thing is not just happening to one person. All over the country, millions of Americans are experiencing these kinds of extremely frustrating technical glitches.
In a previous article, I included some quotes from ordinary Americans that were posted on the official Obamacare Facebook page about the technical glitches that are happening…
-“Good grief. Day three of trying and still can’t get on this website. The government KNEW about this thing going live for two years. TWO YEARS! And this is the best they could do? I shudder to think what’s going to happen once they are in control of my healthcare. They can’t even get their website functioning properly. If my business had rolled out a piece of crap that worked like this I’d be out of business.”
-“How is it that Facebook, which is a non-essential social networking web site, can reliably handle BILLIONS of electronic interactions per second, but the Healthcare.gov site, which is literally the very heart of the Obamacare program wasn’t ready for the obvious millions of visitors that you had to know it would be receiving?”
-“i’m just going to stop even bothering for a couple weeks or so… once the fervor dies down, hopefully i’ll be able to actually create an account!”
-“And yet another day and several tries I once again keep getting nothing but a completely blank page after I log in. The top tab says ‘Successful URL’. Oh how ironic.”
-“Didn’t these Feds ever have mothers that told them not to lie? Maybe they were raised in the wild. This system is trash. I can’t verify my identity or upload documents. Also what’s with Experian verifying ID’s? Don’t care for that at all.”
-“the website can’t verify my identity…the people at the experian verification number can’t verify my identity either….i tried to upload a scan of my driver’s license, and that won’t work either……very annoying process…….i’ve wasted 3 days on this junk.”
Will the Obama administration ever get this fixed?
That is a very good question.
Meanwhile, many Americans that are already covered by health insurance are finding out that their rates are going through the roof thanks to Obamacare. The following example comes from a recent Mercury News article…
“I really don’t like the Republican tactics, but at least now I can understand why they are so pissed about this. When you take $10,000 out of my family’s pocket each year, that’s otherwise disposable income or retirement savings that will not be going into our local economy.”
Have you heard from your health insurance company lately?
If not, you probably will be soon, and it will probably not be good news.
So what do you think of Obamacare so far? Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…
