Saturday proved that the second time is not the charm for Obamacare. As the Affordable Care Act's second open enrollment got underway in Washington state, customers again found themselves unable to progress past the system's technical errors. The Guardian has the unfortunate, yet unsurprising, news:
Washington’s state’s healthcare exchange shut down after the first few hours of open enrollment on Saturday, as state officials and software engineers tried to resolve a problem with tax credit calculations.
Because of these glitches, officials at the Washington Healthplanfinder decided to shut the site down after just a few hours.
Washingtonians were perhaps hoping that their attempts to sign up for health care would go more smoothly than last year, when the system rejected people for minor errors like hyphens in their last names.
In case you missed last year's national Obamacare debacle, all you need to know is that healthcare.gov was a mess. Errors were apparent from start to finish. The website was so poorly designed and unprepared for visitors, that Health and Human Services Committee Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was grilled on Capitol Hill before she eventually decided to step down in April. If technical problems like these persist this year, I guess the new HHS secretary isn't going to escape the hot seat, either.
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Another interesting tidbit I noticed regarding Washington's exchange site:
About a thousand people who bought insurance the first time around are still having problems getting their payments credited and that money transferred to their insurance companies.
All the government can say is, "Thanks for your patience."
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