Washingtonians brave enough to buy Obamacare on the state-run website have met with a plethora of what officials decide as “software issues” and “human errors.” According to The Columbian, “at least 6,000 accounts have been affected by the billing problems” which include “lost money and information between the exchange and insurance companies and customers not being properly credited by the exchange for their insurance payments.” Officials claim that “thousands of accounts have been repaired each month but new problems keep popping up.”
It now appears as though Jay Inslee and Washington Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler have simply given up on attempting to solve the “software issues.” Last week, Inslee and Kreidler reached an agreement which would allow “anyone experiencing technical difficulties with the health exchange” to bypass the exchange’s “payment system and pay their insurance companies directly.”
A clear directive to ignore the failure of the public sector and opt for the expertise of the private.
I thought it was all Wine and Roses??
“Just ignore it if doesn’t work” Can we also ignore Gov. Carbon Pollution?
Interesting that Inslee and Kreidler “reached an agreement” in August to “allow” customers to pay their insurers directly. I’ve been doing that since April, when I decided that the numerous errors and poor customer service of the Exchange would likely screw up my coverage if I paid through the Exchange. It took a couple of phone calls to my insurer and a couple of testy emails to the Exchange, but I’ve felt much more secure knowing that my insurance company is handling my payments, rather than the incompetently run Exchange.
How incompetent? The Exchange gave me incorrect information about the amount of my premium, and it wasn’t until three months later that it corrected the amount of the premium to coincide with what the insurance company told me I needed to pay.