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About 25% of HealthCare.gov Applications Have Errors
itwbennett writes "An estimated one in four user applications sent from HealthCare.gov to insurance providers have errors introduced by the website, an official with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said during a press briefing Friday. The errors include missing forms, duplicate forms and incorrect information in the applications, such as wrong information about an applicant's marital status, said Julie Bataille, communications director for HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). While the software bugs leading to the errors have largely been fixed, as many as 10 percent of insurance applications may still have errors and consumers who have used HealthCare.gov to buy insurance and have concerns that their applications haven't been processed or have errors should contact their insurers, Bataille said."
You can keep your errors.
Period.
By this point, I think people generally understand that Healthcare.gov is to be avoided if at all possible. This system of systems is a monster (reportedly 500 million lines of code at 60-70% completion), and it's probably too big to test -- testing might take longer than it took to write, i.e., the QA death spiral.
The only reason to use the exchange is to get a subsidy. If you are a normal taxpayer who won't qualify for one, go off-exchange.
Or, join a religious health care pool, which are medical cost-sharing plans that are exempt from the law.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Introduced by the website seems to imply they are because of the website. Both the article and summery say that.
Now from what I have been told, you don't fill out specific forms. You enter specific information into the website and it fills the forms out for you based on the plans you pick. It is supposed to stop you from filling forms out incorrectly or getting confused on wording and so on. It also allows you to do direct comparisons without having to fill 20 forms out for 10 different providers offering 2 plans each.
I've only had to fill out paper health care forms a couple of times, but it's really easy to see how those confusing monsters can be filled out erroneously by the form filler, and then of course there are the transcription problems when forms get computer entered, either by drones in a coding center or by HR people.
What's wrong with this in comparison though, is that when the end-user uses a web site you would assume there is error checking of form logic (ie, if I fill box A and B it should be able to tell if I need to fill out box C). There's still the problem of factual error by the user but that's harder to detect.
The problem here though seems to be the data stored is erroneous due to problems with the code, not due to user error.
We don't have to excuse them, we can demand they anticipate these things and provide for it. They seems to have an idea of these issues, with their plans to create a cadre of "navigators" to help people with internet access and web site help. But the plan and law was heavily politicized, 36 states refused to set up their own exchanges and dumped all of them on the federal exchange. Millions of people who would have gone to medicaid are dumped into exchanges because they refused to expand medicaid.
No doubt there were self inflicted wounds. Politicians scared of people getting sticker shock, insisted on disabling the window shop and see full price option at roll out, That was the root cause of disaster. The first thing the "tech surge" did was to enable window shopping. It was enabled as early as Oct 15, I tested it then, They could not have done it that soon if it was fresh code. Window shopping was the original code, They just disabled the meddling by the politicians and went on the original code path.
Still they are doing it in the right order. Get people to commit to a plan before the dead line. Errors on the back end can be sorted out when they actually file claims,
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This post is the best example of an apologist with no logic or facts for backup.
No. They awarded a known incompetent company with a record of bad projects with a non-compete contract. Then they paid them ONE HALF OF A BILLION DOLLARS for a shitty website and aren't asking for a fucking refund.
I waited until the last minute because 'fuck the government' right? But when I did call, I got a really nice lady that walked me through the whole process in less than 30 minutes. They basically ask you the questions from the forms (the forms are also available to fill out yourself and mail in. Forms link, and instructions link)
I have a family of 4 and we'll end up paying $74.00 per month for Blue Cross Silver plan. It's better than what I have right now through Blue Cross, and I've been paying $400 a month for it.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
It is true the Republicans do have a job on their hands trying to raise votes by "not purchasing them with other peoples money".