WA’s health exchange website suffers more “glitches”

By 5 p.m. this evening, consumers enrolling in Obamacare via our state’s insurance exchange will need to have selected and paid their first month’s premium on plans for health care coverage effective Jan. 1. Unfortunately, as we have come to expect, there is a problem… or two… that will prevent some consumers from meeting today’s deadline.

The state exchange website appears to have gained two more “glitches” during the second enrollment period that began in early November. These new glitches were revealed during the exchange’s board meeting last week.

First, it appears that “15,000 to 20,000 accounts that had plans from last year were supposed to be configured for automatic renewal, but late processing of documentation by the Internal Revenue Service and the Washington state Health Care Authority caused that not to happen.” Exchange officials admit that the problem impacts 20% of all qualified health plans purchased on the exchange. Those affected by this particular “glitch” will face delays in receiving proof of health coverage because “carriers will not be able to process the applications in time for Jan. 1.”

Second, a rather significant error has resulted in a problem with processing tax-credit eligibility for 6,000 new Healthplanfinder accounts created after Nov. 23. According to exchange officials, the “wrong data” was sent to the service. The “data” in question helps “determine tax credits that can help lower the cost of the policies for insurance purchasers who qualify.” The “6,000 affected accounts need to be corrected manually.”

State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler—who does not seem to be privy to much that happens with the exchange—said that the exchange’s board knew of the “glitch” involving the auto-renewals, but were unaware of the tax-credit problem. According to the Seattle Times, “exchange staff told the board that while most of the problems have been fixed, exchange staff is still correcting accounts affected by the glitches.”

The latest Healthplanfinder debacle confirms that government bureaucrats are in capable of running an exchange website. Yet, as we learned last week, Jay Inslee would like nothing more than place bureaucrats in charge of auctioning off fuel credits for his cap-and-tax scheme—a mere repetition of a proven failure.