This has been my experience in trying to enroll in an ACA health care exchange so far: Day1) Went to healthcare.gov and realized that it was swamped. Tried a few times to get into the system to no avail. Very long waiting periods. Spent around an hour attempting to log in or waiting for the system to clear. Day 2) After a long wait, finally gained access to the website and managed to establish a login and password. Got to the enrollment page and again met with long wait times. Tried several different times during the day without success. Spent another hour or so on it on day 2. Day 3-today) After a long wait, got to the enrollment page, but was unable to adequately satisfy the system that I was indeed who I am despite correctly answering several security questions which were quite specific. It’s surprising how much info. they have on me (who holds my mortgage, who had my last car loan, etc). Well, maybe not so surprising.....anyway, I was directed by the website to call Experian to have them verify my identity. I did, and the phone representative said that they did not have a record of me being in the system and told me to call an ACA rep to try and straighten it out. Called ACA rep who fished around for a while with no positive outcome. She put me on hold while she tried to connect me with a supervisor. While on hold I was disconnected. Around another hour spent on it so far today. I’m going to call back and try to get this straightened out. Here’s the bottom line for me though: I am NOT throwing a tantrum and cursing the government for never being able to do anything right and using this as an example of how bad the government is and how we can’t trust them to do anything right blah, blah, blah. I understand that this is an extremely complex system, that it is new, and that it will require some time to get it running properly. Believe me, I have spent more time and energy dealing with private insurance companies and other commercial enterprises than this. It’s so easy to be cynical and say that government is the problem, that they can never do anything right, and that the private sector is better at delivering services. Bunk! While the ACA is FAR from a perfect piece of legislation, it’s a damn sight better than where we were before it became law. Again I will say that we need a single-payer national health care plan. For starters, let’s offer Medicare to everyone who wants it and work out from there.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Oct 2013 15:54:41 +0000