|
 Citing nearly 2 million visits to the HealthCare.gov website and
over 250,000 inquiries at call centers before Monday's sign-up
deadline, the government gave consumers an extra day to enroll by
midnight on Tuesday for January coverage.
It added flexibility by encouraging consumers to contact government
call centers if they had started but not been able to finish their
applications, without specifying a deadline for completing those
enrollments.
"Sometimes despite your best efforts, you might have run into delays
caused by heavy traffic to HealthCare.gov, maintenance periods, or
other issues with our systems that prevented you from finishing the
process on time," read a blog post on HealthCare.gov on Tuesday. "If
this happened to you, don't worry — we still may be able to help
you get covered as soon as Jan. 1."
The last-minute changes were aimed at getting as many people as
possible insured under the Affordable Care Act, Obama's major
domestic policy initiative. The administration has been moving the
sign-up goal posts as it tries to recover from technical failures
and political missteps that dogged the enrollment drive for weeks
after it opened on Oct. 1.
Ahead of Monday, more than 1 million people had signed up for
private coverage through HealthCare.gov — which serves 36 states — and 14 state-run marketplaces, according to state and federal
estimates.
Enrollment data from the final dash was not available on Tuesday,
but administration officials cited "amazing interest in signing up
for Jan. 1."
"We are taking thousands of calls at our call centers, which remain
open until midnight, and we are seeing thousands of visitors
complete enrollment online," said Julie Bataille, spokeswoman for
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which runs the
HealthCare.gov site.
Americans who wait until after Tuesday to begin the process of
selecting a health plan will have missed the deadline for health
insurance coverage starting Jan. 1 and will be covered as of
Feb. 1, CMS said on Tuesday afternoon.
The New Year's push represents the biggest test yet of the program's
ability to draw in enough consumers to make it financially viable.
The Congressional Budget Office forecast 7 million people would sign
up by March 31, the last date to get coverage in 2014, but
HealthCare.gov's problems threw those estimates into doubt.
About one-third or more of those newly insured will need to be
young, healthy adults whose payments into the system would help
offset the costs of covering older, sicker people.
MINIMIZING THE CONFUSION
The problematic rollout of the health law known as Obamacare, which
was passed in 2010 and survived legal challenges, helped send
Obama's popularity ratings to record lows and stepped up Republican
efforts to gut the law and use it against Democrats in 2014
congressional elections.
The more recent changes, which the administration has said are
intended to show flexibility, have introduced a new element of
confusion for consumers as well as the health insurance companies
that have been pressed by the government to allow new members to
pay, and even sign up, past Jan. 1 for retroactive coverage. So
far the industry has agreed to extend the first payment deadline to
Jan. 10.
[to top of second column] |
"Health plans will continue to do everything they can to help
consumers through the enrollment process and to mitigate potential
confusion or disruption caused by all of these last-minute changes
to the rules and deadlines," said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for
American's Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade and lobbying
group.
"Navigator" groups that have been chosen by the government to help
people sign up said they were receiving panicked calls from
consumers who mistakenly thought they would be shut out of any
coverage in 2014 if they didn't sign up now.
"They think if they don't enroll today they're going to be
penalized," said Sandra Luz, lead navigator at the Community Council
of Greater Dallas. Luz said the group's office was prepared to stay
open late on Tuesday to accommodate more calls and walk-in visits
and would work over the holiday week with the exception of Christmas
Day and New Year's Day.
The Affordable Care Act requires most Americans to be enrolled in
coverage by March 31 or face penalties that start at $95. This
week's deadline, which had already been moved to Dec. 23 from
Dec. 15, applied to coverage starting on Jan. 1.
"A ton more people are calling in right now, and this is from people
who haven't been doing this any earlier. There really are many more
people who are just looking at this for the first time thinking, 'Oh
my goodness, I need to get this done now,'" said Ari Epstein, a
navigator for SER National in Waukegan, Illinois.
He said he worked with one consumer on health plan options until 11
p.m. on Monday.
"What's really taking the most time isn't the issues with the site
that I've seen, it's folks who have questions about coverage, and
the specifics of any respective plan that I don't have answers for.
The wait times for the respective providers can be two hours or two
and a half hours," he said.
Several state-run exchanges have also moved their enrollment
deadlines. New York and California, two of the largest, added a
one-day grace period similar to the federal insurance marketplace.
Massachusetts said on Tuesday it would allow sign-ups until Dec.
31 given heavy volume and technical problems that have hampered its
exchange. Rhode Island, Oregon and Maryland had already extended
their deadlines beyond Christmas.
(Additional reporting by Curtis Skinner in New York;
writing by Doina Chiacu; editing by Michele Gershberg, Grant McCool and Leslie
Adler)
[© 2013 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2013 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
