Would you put up with this from a private insurance company?
At 7:29 p.m. Tuesday evening (a couple of hours before the website was due for a scheduled “downtime”) the CEO for the Washington Health Benefits Exchange announced yet another “Oops!”
It seems that about 6,000 people had their health insurance policies cancelled. No reason except that somebody pushed the wrong button. Thousands of people are going to be notified to fix the problem by going online, again, and repeating a process that takes anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes. They must complete their own repairs by the Dec. 23 deadline of they will not have health insurance coverage for January 1st. Of course, no heads will roll, nobody loses their job down there. Nobody takes blame.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on a system that constantly has problems for applicants and, I am sure, brokers trying to help applicants. And the Washington exchange is heralded as one of the best in the country! Premiums paid by subscribes to the exchange are not being forwarded to the insurance companies as promised. Thus insurance companies are paying claims without receiving premiums. This scenario never existed before the government took over the health insurance system. Not in Washington. If it’s this bad now, what will we do when Federal money dries up in 2016?
Richard Ek
Everett
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