Consumers rushed to meet a Monday deadline for picking or
changing Affordable Care Act health plans for the new year, creating a surge of
visitors to HealthCare.gov that tested the revamped site. The federal
enrollment portal, which was hobbled by technical problems last year, appeared
to hold up well despite a swell in volume, according to people familiar with
its operation. Some state-run insurance sites extended enrollment deadlines and
in-person sign-up hours due to heavy last-minute demand.
Overall enrollment is scheduled to run until Feb. 15. But in
most cases, consumers had been told that if they wanted to change existing
plans or start new ones in time for Jan. 1, they had to do so by Monday. Consumers
in some cases grappled with delay. Calls to the Minnesota insurance exchange,
for example, were averaging about 1,600 an hour, which was a historic high, the
marketplace said. The state extended its deadline to Saturday.
About five million people enrolled in health plans for 2014
through the federal marketplace, now used by 37 states. As of Dec. 5, only
720,000 had returned to select a plan for 2015. Advocates have made a push to
get people to re-enroll because they could see their insurance costs increase
if they don’t come back. Outreach has included a flurry of last-minute email
and text-message reminders.
The Obama administration said it has built the federal site
to withstand 250,000 simultaneous users, with the option of adding more
capacity if needed. Katie Hill, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and
Human Services, confirmed the call center was experiencing “longer than normal
wait times” but said users could access HealthCare.gov without delays.
Stephani Becker, a senior policy specialist at the Sargent
Shriver National Center on Poverty Law in Chicago, said a jump in people trying
to beat the deadline over the past week revealed problems, as consumers tried
to unlock last year’s accounts and reset passwords. She also said low-income
legal immigrants were still being directed to enroll in Medicaid even though
they hadn’t lived in the U.S. long enough to qualify.
Ms. Becker described a family who had a plan through the
exchange last year and wanted to renew it and add a family member. She said it
took an hour and a half to unlock the account and update the family’s
information, and then another 90 minutes to get a formal denial from Medicaid.
The family had to return to complete the work on Saturday.
Residents in some states will have more time to switch plans
or get new ones for January. Idaho, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts,
Minnesota, Rhode Island and Washington are among those that either extended
their deadlines or established later cutoff dates for changes.
Click
here to access the full article on The Wall Street Journal.