Front Page  »  

California overstated health insurance exchange Web traffic

October 3, 2013

obamacareCalifornia’s newly created health insurance exchange vastly overstated the traffic its website received Tuesday during the rollout of Obamacare. [LA Times]

Covered California’s website, coveredca.com, received 645,000 hits Tuesday, far fewer than the 5 million it initially reported, state officials said.

“Someone misspoke and thought it was indeed 5 million hits,” said Covered California spokesman Dana Howard. “That was incorrect.”

State officials stated the 5 million figure as not only a sign of strong consumer interest in the insurance exchange, but also as reason for users having difficulty in navigating the $313 million online enrollment system.

Technical problems delayed consumers during the first two days of enrollment under the federal healthcare law. Covered California shut down its website from 9 p.m. Tuesday to 7 a.m. Wednesday and again for two hours Wednesday morning.

Information on health plans was not loading properly and consumers endured long hold times, according to the state.

California is attempting to enroll more than 2 million people in the health insurance exchange in the next year. The target figure is larger than that of any other state.

 


Loading...
Subjects:                 
Related:


45 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

This is not the News story – I have good insurance and just tried to see what they are going to charge IF I didn’t. I was part of the masses (so called) that went to site. This is not the news story


The news story is just this simple – the amount they are going to charge. Affordable Care Act my rear… Bronze plans for a guy my age and a BRONZE level with a total out of pocket of $6K – $60.00 co-pays to visit a doctor and paying 40% of covered costs for other issues will be just under $4000 a year – AFFORDABLE? On Mars maybe. I just don’t understand where this went wrong. And why we are fighting over this crap.


Either open it up to the whole country for the exchanges, leave it alone or go to single payer and stand in line for doctors. Either way – this is not the answer.


On January 2, 2014… let’s see what the tally is for individuals that signed up for this mess. No doubt – it’s cheap for the young and the poor who get taxpayer help. But for a guy who’s 40 years old and makes $48K a year – good fricking luck on getting him to sign up., My guess he’ll pay the $750 penalty and move on – roll that dice to see if he makes it another day without the AFFORDABLE CARE ACT at his side.


0

You have some good points but I wonder how much they are influenced by the fact that you have had a tremendous deal on health insurance up to now? If I had been able to find a policy like the one you described a few years ago, I wouldn’t have had to go without health insurance for over a year. I was mid-50s and was quoted almost twice as much for a $2500 deductible policy from the only company that would take me. Where and how did you latch on to a policy that makes $4000/year look expensive? Are you in your 20’s? Is the policy partially subsidized by an employer or some other organization?


0

I was without insurance for a long time. I work3ed hard to find a job that has great benefits. My point is one thing, the site hits don’t matter on the first few days of the launch. It’s how many uninsured actually signed up for the insurance that matters. Let’s talk about that on Jan 2, 2014. Then we’ll see what type of affordable act this truly is.


0

I am 40 and I pay $3,600 per year with a $5k deductible through Blue Shield. It is not employer or government subsidized.


0

Also I should note that BEFORE the affordable care act was passed, I paid $1,400 per year for the same plan.


0

And in other shocking news, fresh water is being pumped into the ocean during the installation of the Los Osos underground sewer system, prompting the mentally ill to call for its cancelation.


0

It looks like Louisiana holds the record for number of people who signed up for Obamacare: Zero.


Further, it sucks for LO’s BlueShield/BlueCross who spent $60,000,000 and 3 years preparing for Tuesday’s opening of the exchange.


The company spent three years and $60 million preparing for Tuesday’s opening, so the lack of momentum seemed a bit of a letdown. Sales agents were getting plenty of calls from people seeking information, Maginnis said, but the agency is not able to sell a policy to anyone without a functioning HealthCare.gov website.


“It was not as intense as we had anticipated,” he said.


0

OK, what gives? A couple of days ago Stew Jenkins and the Hallelujah Chorus were telling all of us that this was going to be the best thing since the combination of two hydrogen atoms with one oxygen atom. Now, they’re AWOL. Have they gone up in the Secular Rapture? Or is it possible, now that the reality seems to be sinking in and millions of gullible people are realizing that this crap ain’t free that the Obamacare Boosters, also known as the Barackettes, don’t want to chime in anymore? Hmmmm. The world wonders.


0

They’re still waiting for their healthcare.gov / coveredca.com pages to load?


0

The first day of the first state’s roll-out of a complex health-care program had a few glitches. I’m not surprised. Blue Shield, which has been in business and on-line for decades, sometimes takes 5 calls, talking to five different representatives, to get anything close to the correct answer.


I don’t, however, support such wild inaccuracy of the numbers of contacts the first day. What makes it worse is when news publications also get even the government’s numbers wrong.


CCN first said there were “6450,000 hits,” and LATimes also made an error. Mistakes are made, even by the government. It isn’t the end of the world (usually).


I actually will be investigating changing policies in the future, but I will wait a few weeks before I try the exchange.


0

Alright, let’s stipulate that any new enterprise can have a rough first day. The issues with the website can be excused, with the caveat that in CA one would think that the state could have found enough hungry techies to build the best website going. That part is not really what I’m referring to. I already looked up what the new plans would cost me personally if I were to lose the plan I currently have. It’s a jump of between $400 to $600 per month. That’s a big deal, and I don’t have the out-of-pocket costs with my current plan that I would have with one of the new plans. So, for me and my family, this thing is a dead-bang loser, a turkey, and that’s based on the government’s own figures from their own website. I researched the costs last week, but have no intention of signing up for one of the new plans while I still have my good plan. So, I believe that lots of other people are going to see the same sort of price increase that I saw, and the popularity of the ACA, not very high now, will only fall further. That’s my honest opinion. Some people will see an improvement but I don’t believe, based on what I’ve been able to see, that most will. I could be wrong and time will tell.


0

Fair enough — a civil and honest reply devoid of political propaganda. I am currently covered under an employer plan but may well be on my own shortly due to indirect results of the government shutdown. I looked into getting my own insurance a couple of years ago when the similar circumstances occurred and found it too costly to bear without steady and decent income.


I haven’t checked thoroughly yet because there is no rush for me. But from what I have seen, I will probably be able to get insured for half of what I would have been charged by the one private insurance company that would even take me. (I have no problems that will cost big $, but had a run of several minor medical costs that made me “undesirable” to several health insurers who relied on formulaic criteria for determining eligibility back then. “Death Panels” are not new and did not originate with government health care programs.)


My experience is very different from yours and I suspect that there will be a lot of people who benefit from the new programs despite the fact that they were compromised into inefficiency to get the votes to pass the ACA. As you say, I could be wrong too and time will tell.


0

First,


“Covered California’s website, coveredca.com, received 6450,000 hits Tuesday, far fewer than the 5 million it initially reported, state officials said.”


and then


“but also as reason for users having difficulty in navigating the $313 million online enrollment system.”

——————————————

How rich is this? The government overstates the web traffic by 10 fold and then reveals the system that just cost 313 million dollars can’t even handle 645,000 hits in one day. Nah, your government wouldn’t overstate their workload would they? And they sure wouldn’t just run to the public with those overstated numbers as if they knew what they were talking about would they? When will you people ever learn?


Stu Jenkins, you there? Where are you now with your claims of a “simple” and “easy” system? And don’t even get me started on what you’ll find if you ever do get through for a quote on one of these insurance exchanges.


0

Almost:


The number of unique online visitors was actually 514,000, the number of hits was 645,000, and the state received 19,000 calls; Howard said the error was the result of internal miscommunication, according to the Los Angeles Times.


0

The “6450,000” number came from CCN’s article. It has since been corrected.


0

Whatever the number, California has had ample time and money to develop the tech back-end, and to fail with only 600K hits (514K unique) is pretty bad. How many people in CA need health insurance, again? I’m sure it’s more than one million… that should have been their target capacity, at least.


This is a technical failure, true; however, as I and several others here have pointed out, it’s the offered plans that are the real problem.


0

QUOTING ARTICLE: “Covered California’s website, coveredca.com, received 6450,000 hits Tuesday, far fewer than the 5 million it initially reported, state officials said.”


————


“6450,000” is 1,450,000 greater than 5,000,000.


0

Which is better than Kentucky where only 2,900 people were able to sign up in the entire state.


0

The times says 514,000 and can states. 5450,000


Does anyone proof read this stuff?


Regardless of the true numbers, they were ill prepared and over-run both online and phones


0

But, I will say this in all fairness….I just called covered cal and after waiting a mere 20 minutes, I got through and my questions were answered by a very friendly yet professional young man.


I will be moving from my $1167/mo plan to a subsidized $249/mo enhanced silver plan.


Thanks to all of you who pay the taxes that makes this possible.


0

Is ti safe to say that you can now afford to pay $918 in taxes each month now?


0

I could always afford to pay my taxes, always have and with the kids gone and no mortgage, I play plenty. Thanks for asking.


0

I will be moving from my $1167/mo plan to a subsidized $249/mo enhanced silver plan.


Thanks to all of you who pay the taxes that makes this possible.

———————

Great. Just great. Would you mind if started working a couple extra hours a day to start paying that $800 a month you just off loaded from your back to mine? .


0

Hey, I didn’t vote for this guy, but his plan made my rates increase $400/mo. Ain’t sarcasm great!


0

Here we go…

It boils down to what the definition of is, is…


Just got my letter today from Anthem dropping us from our current policy…


0

Don’t worry the government is here to help and will take care of you.


0

Hehe, the old “Nine Most Terrifying Words” eh? Nice.


0

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'”


0

that is what the enemies of self government would have you believe


0
1 2