Obamacare Working Great, Except It Still Doesn't Do Any of the Tasks It's Supposed to Do

From JWF, the minor improvements in the front end only serve to exacerbate the huge problems on the back end.

Despite the Obama administration’s claim that HealthCare.gov is “vastly improved,” insurance companies are still grappling with error-riddled files fed to them from the flawed website. The lingering glitch could cause major problems weeks down the road, resulting in people thinking they’ve signed up when insurance companies have no record of them doing so.

These so-called “back-end” problems were largely glossed over when federal health officials confidently claimed over the weekend they had met their own goals for improving the website by Dec. 1.

...

Jeff Zients, the official appointed to fix the ObamaCare site since its disastrous Oct. 1 rollout, said it is “night and day from what it was.”

But insurers continue to deal with the same set of problems that have shaken their confidence for weeks in the system they have to rely on to enroll new customers.

“Until the enrollment process is working from end-to-end, many consumers will not be able to enroll in coverage,” Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, said in a statement.

...

“This is not a functioning website yet,” James Capretta, senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told Fox News.

What the insurers are doing is hand-checking and hand-fixing of these mistakes. Which they can do, so long as there are not many forms to fix. But if Obama gets his wish and Obamacare "selections" ramp up, the manual fixing of error-riddled 834's will not be possible. The whole point of automating data is to take the limiting choke-point of slow human hands out of the process.

It's especially a problem for those who hope to have insurance by January 1st -- those kicked off their plans despite Obama's repeated assertions that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan, period" and that if you have insurance, "you don't have to do anything at all."

Well, those people not only have to fight with a system that still can't enroll people, but they might also have to go without insurance for a few months.

posted by Ace at 02:10 PM

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