99% of Obamacare applications hit a wall

[dkf]

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.

Experts said that if Healthcare.gov's success rate doesn't improve within the next month or so, federal officials could face a situation in January in which relatively large numbers of people believe they have coverage starting that month, but whose enrollment applications are have not been processed.

"It could be public relations nightmare," said Nijhawan. Insurers have told his company that just "1 in 100" enrollment applicants being sent from the federal marketplace have provided sufficient, verified information.

One insurer reported a better, but still stunningly low, rate of enrollment applications containing enough data to process for coverage.

"It's about half of what we've received," a source at that insurer said.

"We're getting incomplete data—about half of the applications we haven't been able to process," said the source, who used the term "corrupted" to describe the batch of applications received.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101087965

[countingbluecars]

1. They will fix it.

How many complaint threads will you post, I wonder?

[Rex]

3. Doesn't really matter, just pretend he is a beta tester.

Obviously not a gamer. I am giving the exchanges a few weeks, this is a nationwide project and will take time to work out all the bugs imo.

[Tien1985]

37. Spot on about

Not being a gamer! I was thinking the same thing. Patch Tuesdays anyone?

This stuff takes time and testing. Nature of the beast.

[dkf]

4. To me, it's all about education.

Better to know you need to check up on your enrollment than be caught flat footed.

[global1]

5. Does Anyone Know If The Insurance Companies Were Cooperative In Setting This System Up?....

And will this government shutdown further slow down how applications are processed? I'm just wondering how much of this could be sabotage by insurance companies - so that these issues show up and then the Repugs can say - see it don't work.

[treestar]

6. More bad news.

Oh dear.

[grantcart]

8. lol

[msanthrope]

15. You Better Believe It! nt

[Pretzel_Warrior]

21. Bahahaha!

[Spazito]

40. LOL!

[Cerridwen]

7. Here's the punch line and might be why the insurance companies

are complaining.

Last 2 paragraphs of the article:

Experts said that if the lag in processing enrollments continues on a large scale, insurers expect the federal government to tell them that they must provide benefits to people even as applications are still being processed.

"In talking to some of the insurers, they pretty much assume that even if there are issues, the feds will say, 'You know what, it's your problem, they've signed up,' " said Koritala.

My emphasis added.

[Niceguy1]

27. which would be unreasonable

If the gov did that as they don't do yhst themselves for medicaid, or the va, ss, etc.....

[Cerridwen]

29. As long as the ins. cos. think they might and it gets them

in gear...I'm not sure I see a downside.

[Niceguy1]

41. its not very

Productive treating your vendors that way.

[WilliamPitt]

9. I reply with Mr. Krugman.

Political reporting in America, especially but not only on TV, tends to be focused on the play-by-play. Who won today’s news cycle? And, to be fair, this sort of thing may matter during the final days of an election...Obamacare isn’t up for a popular referendum, or a revote of any kind. It’s the law, and it’s going into effect. Its future will depend on how it works over the next few years, not the next few weeks...the glitches of October won’t matter in the long run. But why are they actually encouraging? Because they appear, for the most part, to be the result of the sheer volume of traffic, which has been much heavier than expected. And this means that one big worry of Obamacare supporters — that not enough people knew about the program, so that many eligible Americans would fail to sign up — is receding fast...it’s important that people who want to sign up can actually do so. But the computer problems can and will be fixed. So, by March 31, when enrollment for 2014 closes, we can be reasonably sure that millions of Americans who were previously uninsured will have coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare will have become a reality, something people depend on, rather than some fuzzy notion Republicans could demonize. And it will be very hard to take that coverage away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/opinion/krugman-reform-turns-real.html

Enjoy the horse race, tho. Betcha your shoes the story will be different soon enough. Six-month window to apply and all.

[tosh]

28. ...

[arthritisR_US]

33. Thank you Will! It's a relief to have realism in

in the face of reactionary OP's

[Hoyt]

10. Big Obamacare supporter here, but they need to fix this.

It just gives right wingers room to say "see gubmint can't handle big initiatives."

If it isn't as bad as OP indicates, they need to publicise that hundreds of thousands are getting signed up, etc.

Of course, the right wingers would criticise Obama if going to exchange cured cancer.

[Ellipsis]

11. 42 java-scripts per page apparently, tons of http calls overloading the servers

where two would do... so goes the rumor

[Recursion]

12. AJAX. It's all the rage... 5 years ago

US Government IT: yesterday's solutions tomorrow. Sigh.

[Ellipsis]

16. I'm clueless about scripting... but I wonder if it could have been intentially poorly designed.

Nah.

[Recursion]

18. No. Plenty of USG websites still use ColdFusion, for pete's sake

This really just is a case of the US government having a lot of inertia in project management, I think.

[Ellipsis]

19. I was at a roll out party for ColdFusion back in the day

I met John Sculley there in some tripped out funky basement space... hah, kind of a peckerwood... he was.

[Recursion]

20. Way back when it was still Allaire Cold Fusion ...

... I called up the support line over a memory leak problem and heard, "Allaire, this is JJ" and got to debug the issue with the guy who created the software. I miss the .com era.

[Roland99]

32. They should be using jQuery and really should look into SPA

[Recursion]

39. Or, you know, REST-ful static pages

Most clients find my site architecture charmingly retro and simple: a given URL returns a hypertext document, generally the same document for all time... I know, I know, that's so 1995... Still, I spend a lot of time browsing with Lynx, and I just miss that.

[dionysus]

46. wow. i haven't heard lynx mentioned in a long time.

I used that freshman year in college on a vax system before we had a connection that supported the first browsers the following year.

[Recursion]

47. I've gotten to the point that I only fire up X11 for graphics stuff when I'm programming

I find text displays much easier to concentrate on. But so when I need to look something up, I end up using Lynx. It's still in development, and still a pretty good browser.

[msanthrope]

13. This is concerning. nt

[BluegrassStateBlues]

14. Better throw the baby out with the bathwater then.

Leave millions uninsured because of some website glitches.

Are those the new GOP talking points?

[treestar]

17. It would see so!

Welcome to DU!

[pnwmom]

22. This is also because of millions of people who have been browsing. n/t

[kestrel91316]

23. Software is being tweaked this weekend. I know that will make you unhappy. Too bad.

[bluestate10]

42. I really don't understand the OP. Every thing the person posts are sly attacks on

policies that are done in the best interests of Americans. I was not happy that the exchanges couldn't handle 100% of visits and/or calls, but I expect that will be fixed. The OP seems to be taking the word of insurance companies and/or rightwing "news" sources.

[madinmaryland]

24. "insurance industry sources told CNBC" That raises my suspicions to the accuracy of this

"report". A right wing corporate media outlet that is controlled by the insurance companies is receiving "information" from those said insurance companies.

I would view this article with a very high skepticism.

[Kingofalldems]

25. Could you possibly combine all of your anti-Obamacare threads into one?

It gets confusing after a while.

[arthritisR_US]

34. No kidding! Gets a wee bit monotonous.

[Fla Dem]

26. Wouldn't be at all surprised if there is a little skullduggery on the Ins Co's parts. nt

[tosh]

30. Would anyone like to reminisce

about the roll-out for PART D?

[steve2470]

35. With all due respect about the healthcare.gov site.....

It's early days. Overwhelming traffic levels combined with *possibly* sub-optimal software design = glitches.

Please be patient folks. If a few weeks goes by and there are still an unacceptable level of glitches, I'll join the complaining chorus. I'm sure the HHS people and the design people are going through hell right now.

[gulliver]

36. Republican/Infogix propaganda and business solicitation.

Um, the bozo quoted is with a company that "handles data integrity issues for major insurers." Did you even read your own post?

[Ikonoklast]

38. Well, you *did* get one rec...from someone that got the boot.

You have the Idiot vote going for you.

[phleshdef]

43. Oh god. As a web applications developer myself, these people are full of shit.

Look, you can do all the virtual load testing and beta testing with small groups. But there is nothing and I mean nothing that can prepare you for the onslaught that HealthCare.gov has been hit with. They really needed to see a true real world demonstration of what they'd be dealing with in order to figure out how much they need to scale up or which areas of code need more optimization to handle that sort of load. Its a testament to how powerful the ACA is going to be once its running full speed.

As for gaps in information, they are going to have to contact users with gaps and tell them they need to "reconfirm" some information and pull them back in to fix their applications. And if the health insurance companies want those customers, they can also step in and start contacting folks to fix that sort of thing. Its not something that's all that damn hard to remedy.

Hopefully, more states will eventually be encouraged to setup their own exchanges which will consolidate the concerns, server resources, bandwidth resources and customer services needs among different states.

[davidpdx]

45. +1

It's nice to get a better explanation from someone who knows what they are talking about.

[The Straight Story]

48. I forsee a lot of scam letters going out in the future

"Thanks for signing up for the ACA - due to some issues with our implementations and high demand some data was not received properly. Click here to confirm your information."

[Spazito]

44. What really pisses off the insurers is...

so many are trying to enroll they are overwhelming the system. Too bad for the insurers, good news for those who were uninsured but will soon have coverage in spite of the mega-millions spent by insurance companies trying to stop Obamacare.