HHS Call Center Gets Through First Week of ACA Relaunch
November 21, 2014
While the Obama administration says that the relaunch of the Affordable Care Act’s official website has gone smoothly since November 15, there have been a few reports that there has been one little frustration or another popping up. While by almost all accounts the ACA website has been working quite a bit better and faster than a year ago, there are some who still say there were long delays in buying their insurance and there have also been delays in accessing users’ accounts. It’s not surprising, given the market demand.
In order to get people on the health insurance rolls, there were hundreds of different enrollment events around the country. These events were held at public places where people were allowed to go and browse the healthcare exchange website and make a purchase if they felt they were ready to pull the trigger.
Among the biggest problems that have cropped up since the relaunch are people who were having a hard time logging into accounts they had long ago set up. Some were also having problems proving who they were. The process, known as identity proofing, was something that also caused some problems a year ago. Those who have been expecting problems to crop up again point to this issue as one that shows not everything has been fixed.
Still, there was good news to report as well. The Department of Health and Human Services said that more than one million people had visited healthcare.gov as of November 17 and its call center handled more than 200,000 calls over the weekend.
“The first 48 hours went very smoothly,” Lisa Rubino, a senior vice president at Molina Healthcare who oversees the company’s exchange business, told Modern Healthcare. “We didn’t see many of the glitches we saw last year,” she said.
Considering the number of states and number of locations that reported big time problems a year ago, it seems as if the relaunch was indeed quite a bit smoother this time around. Enrollment workers in states like Alabama, Florida, Pennsylvania and South Carolina were all reporting a relatively smooth launch. One enrollment counselor in Alabama told The New York Times that the website had been working perfectly all day. Lauren Banks, the chief policy and advocacy officer at AIDS Alabama said that the relaunch was the beginning of a brand new start for the Affordable Care Act.