Friday, October 18, 2013

For Those of You Who Yesterday Didn't Believe My Federal Exchange Enrollment Estimates and Reports of Backroom Problems...

You need to see today's Wall Street Journal front-page story, "Health Website Woes Widen as Insurers Get Wrong Data."

Here's an excerpt:
After realizing that some applications listed up to three spouses in a single family, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Nebraska, which has about 50 health-law enrollees, had to "stop those enrollments from going through the automated process," said Matt Leonard, the insurer's sales manager. "It takes an automated process and turns it into a manual process," he said.
The biggest health plan in Nebraska has 50 enrollees so far? A state with about 300,000 uninsured.

Then this:
Scott & White Health Plan in Temple, Texas, has received 25 enrollees from the federally run exchange so far.
Enrollment numbers this low are what I am hearing from health plans all across the 36 states where the Obama administration is running the exchanges.

I am not hearing about thousands of enrollments per health plan. Maybe a few hundred at best––from plan after plan.

And on top of a lack of enrollments, there are the backroom problems. One health plan after another is saying the same thing the Nebraska Blues plan and Medical Mutual of Ohio were willing to say on the record:
Emerging errors include duplicate enrollments, spouses reported as children, missing data fields and suspect eligibility determinations, say executives at more than a dozen health plans. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Nebraska said it had to hire temporary workers to contact new customers directly to resolve inaccuracies in submissions. Medical Mutual of Ohio said one customer had successfully signed up for three of its plans.

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