US officials planned to unveil an improved healthcare insurance website over the weekend, hoping for a smoother second enrollment period under President Obama’s health reform plan.
The reconfigured, improved insurance marketplace website went live on Sunday night before the three-month open enrollment period begins on Nov. 15, allowing existing policyholders to change their coverage. The HealthCare.gov website is easy to navigate and read through, offering different enrollment plans and prices based on eligibility — differing from
Officials promised the site would make it easier for users to shop for coverage plans, with enough computing capacity, call-center help, and other beneficial new resources to handle re-enrollment of all current policyholders.
“We are strongly encouraging our customers to return to HealthCare.gov…shop and compare. The majority, particularly those who may have overlooked available federal tax credits last year, will be able to save money,” said Kevin Counihan, chief executive officer of the federal health insurance marketplace.
Last fall, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—commonly known as “Obamacare”—got off to a rocky start because of technical problems with the online marketplace that supposedly would allow people to shop for or switch private policies.
The site’s glitches were smoothed out over time, and as of August around 7.3 million people had purchased health insurance through the federal marketplace or other state-based systems.
However, troubles with the federal marketplace and similar systems gave Republican opponents of Obamacare leverage to criticize the program’s challenging roll-out.
Counihan and the Department of Health and Human Services told press that they were working on major improvements and new features to the revamped sites, such as adding a thousand additional call center workers for the open enrollment period, bring the total to 14,000.
Other new and in-demand features include the ability for a potential customer to “window shop” and compare policies after answering a simpler, limited questionnaire. The site even allows users to enter their zip-code location to get easier information of their state’s insurance marketplace.
“We believe this will be the most popular place on the site, and perhaps even lighten the computing load by allowing consumers to make up their mind before moving to the more data-intensive process of actually signing up,” said Andy Slavitt, a deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services.
Officials said they wanted to avoid past mistakes, such as enrollees overlooking potential benefits or purchasing too-expensive policies over the past year.
The second enrollment period for Obamacare begins on Saturday, Nov. 15 and lasts until February 15. Policyholders will be automatically re-enrolled on their existing plans if they don’t switch.
(With reports from Reuters)
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(LA Midweek November 12-14, 2014 Sec. A pg.1)