Local Healthcare Enrollment Sessions Start In QCA

By Lynnanne Nguyen, KWQC News

Technical glitches are plaguing the Affordable Care Act in its first week. The www.healthcare.govwebsite was taken down temporarily once again overnight so technology experts could try to fix software.    

Homepage of Healthcare.gov

Major glitches during the online registration process have been reported for a week now. The administration said demand was five times higher than what was expected and crashed the system.  

Beyond that, this is a major change for many people. Now, local healthcare providers have set up hotlines and are hosting help sessions and there are a lot of questions.   

Tuesday was the first of many to get questions answered, but there are a few road bumps. 

“It’s so vague, and the system has a glitch already,” Greg Davis says of the healthcare site.

Davis is one of many coming through at the Moline Public Library Tuesday looking for help. 

“A whole bunch of people out there just don’t know what’s really going on,” he says, “I hear mixed emotions of what is this going to be, they’re going to fine us, some of the things I had the same questions on.”

He’s not alone; many others have a lot of questions about health insurance and the Medicaid expansion.

“We’re getting mixed signals,” Carla Sphar says, “The Medicare book that came out in the last couple weeks doesn’t really answer any of my questions.”

While some of their questions are getting answered, there are still a lot of problems to work out. 

“What people really want to know is how much is it going to cost me? They really want to have health insurance, the problem is we can’t really tell them how much it’s going to cost them until all their information is entered into healthcare.gov,” Genesis Health Navigator Jennifer Busch says.

Read the full story by Lynnanne Nguyen from KWQC News.