By Carolyn McClanahan, Forbes
At midnight at the beginning of October 1, I logged onto Healthcare.gov with gleeful anticipation. Throughout the evening on Twitter, healthcare writers joked how we would be responsible for bringing the web site down, all in satisfying our curiosity and the need to write an article. As we all know, it ended up not being a joke. The site went down immediately, and has been the subject of much ridicule since.
Waiting for the website to work again
The worse part of this fiasco? We know millions of people want to shop for coverage, and they are unable to do so through healthcare.gov. On Friday, the administration announced a private firm would take over fixing the broken website and actually set a target date for the fix by the end of November. Because of the website delay, any penalties for not having insurance coverage have now been pushed to March 31, 2014, which should give people plenty of time to purchase their coverage.
But what if you want coverage by January 1st? There are two groups of people who are keenly interested in the availability of good health insurance coverage – those who are uninsured and those who are paying a lot of money for their current insurance. One fix that has been made to the healthcare.gov site? You can now see the plans and the cost of the plans. Many people who have individual insurance have discovered the plans through healthcare.gov are less expensive than their current plan and they want to make a switch. So What Is The Workaround since the website doesn’t work? YOU CAN USE A HEALTH INSURANCE AGENT TO BUY QUALIFIED INSURANCE.
The administration currently suggests four options:
1.Submitting an 11 page paper application that is very cumbersome and doesn’t really sign you up for coverage – there are no policies to pick from in the application and it appears all the paper application does is check your eligibility for tax credits.
2.Filling out the online application at healthcare.gov. It was announced by the White House this morning that the application is fully functional. Of course, it still doesn’t share information about the policies. And I just tried to log on at 1:30 p.m. EDT – the site is not working. Don’t over-promise and under-deliver.
3.Apply by phone at 1-800-318-2596. I tried this option Sunday. A young man answered shortly and was super-nice. He stated he would help me fill out the same application that is available online. It would then take one to two weeks to receive information about my plan choices. I already knew I did not qualify for premium tax credits and just wanted to know about the plans. He couldn’t provide this information to me.
4.For in person help, you are referred to a Navigator or certified application counselors. Bad news – they know just as much as anyone else, which is pretty much nothing. They will take your application, and as I stated in option #1, the only thing the application does is determine if you qualify for a premium tax credit. You still cannot sign up for a policy.
Read the full article by Carolyn McClanahan from Forbes.
