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from the sign-this-form-and-we-can-cure-the-hemorrhage-with-a-money-extraction dept.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) open enrollment period for US Soylentis has ended. The website was plagued by problems from its launch and even had issues on the the last day.
So, did any Soylentis actually use healthcare.gov to sign up and how has your experience been with the Obamacare system so far?
For those that don't know, from Wikipedia:
The ACA was enacted with the goals of increasing the quality and affordability of health insurance, lowering the uninsured rate by expanding public and private insurance coverage, and reducing the costs of healthcare for individuals and the government. It introduced a number of mechanisms - including mandates, subsidies, and insurance exchanges - meant to increase coverage and affordability. The law also requires insurance companies to cover all applicants within new minimum standards and offer the same rates regardless of pre-existing conditions or sex. Additional reforms aimed to reduce costs and improve healthcare outcomes by shifting the system towards quality over quantity through increased competition, regulation, and incentives to streamline the delivery of healthcare. The Congressional Budget Office projected that the ACA will lower both future deficits and Medicare spending.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 06 2014, @09:28PM
Well, you didn't talk to me. I tried to sign up for the expanded Medi-cal, the California version of Medicaid, with the CoveredCA web site a couple days before the 2013 deadline and the web site was quite broken. I couldn't get past the login screen. I have a screen shot of the result to use as proof in case the IRS wants some money from me. As of the beginning of February I am theoretically covered but have not received anything in the mail from Medi-cal. I will be calling them on Monday.
Now, I tried signing up a friend of mine who doesn't use Internet a few days ago just before the final deadline and, despite the last-minute crush, the web site worked splendidly other than being understandably slow. But when we got to the final page, where it takes a digital signature, the site would not take it and sending instead an error message. It was hopelessly broken at that point.
A couple days later we tried it again. The web site lost all the information we'd previously entered so it had to be re-entered. However, we were able to get it all re-entered and I set him on his way in ten minutes. It worked well.
So, the moral of the story of the California health care exchange is this: Don't use it when it's very busy.
Incidentally, based upon some of the error messages that were generated, the website seems to be an unhealthy mix of .NET and Java J2SE. Ugh!