Obamacare Countdown: Week to First Major Enrollment Deadline
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ABC News(WASHINGTON) — For tens of thousands of Americans, the race to complete Obamacare enrollments is on.
Exactly one week from Monday, by 11:59 pm ET on Dec. 23, anyone seeking health insurance coverage effective Jan. 1, 2014, must have completed an application, chosen a plan and transmitted that enrollment form to their selected issuer.
The deadline looms large for the roughly 1.9 million people who have made it deep into the process — completing an application and receiving an eligibility determination — but not yet selected a particular plan. Many of these consumers have been hamstrung by glitches and delays at every turn and are simply stuck in limbo. Only 365,000 had successfully signed up through Nov. 30.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid said Monday it is surging staff at call centers and in-person assistance locations to help resolve those gridlocked applications and essentially help people start over. And they say the online and phone systems are working smoothly for those who try.
Meanwhile, a small army of contractors, insurance administrators and government staff are going case by case, by hand, through tens of thousands of enrollments, called 834 forms, that either never got sent to insurance companies or were seriously flawed in October and November.
CMS says all 15,000 Americans whose records never made it to the insurance company because of glitches on HealthCare.gov have been contacted, but no word on how many have successfully enrolled.
“All of those individuals have heard directly from the federal marketplace at this point,” CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille told ABC News.
Bataille said the administration has turned over its massive, raw enrollment data files from the website to all 300 participating insurance companies. The insurers can now see who selected their plans and are reconciling that list with the formal enrollment records (834s) they’ve received.
“They are also reaching out directly over the course of the next few days and this week to make sure that they can verify information with the consumers and get them successfully enrolled,” she said.
America’s Health Insurance Plans, the leading industry advocacy group, told ABC News Monday that the CMS data files have been “helpful,” for the first time giving a, “clear picture of the size and scope of the technical challenges that existed.”
“The process CMS put in place to address these back end challenges is making a difference, and we are seeing improvements every day,” said AHIP spokesman Robert Zirkelbach. “But we’re not where we need to be. More work still needs to be done to make sure these people can have confidence and peace of mind come January.” That’s a deadline that likely won’t be met: polls prove the law remains extremely unpopular with tens of millions of Americans.
Is there a chance some people snagged by 834 errors won’t be covered on Jan. 1? “We hope not,” he said. “We want to avoid that situation if at all possible.”
One footnote for those still hoping to apply by mail: your deadline for January coverage may have already passed. While top administration officials have pushed multiple avenues of enrollment, CMS said Monday that it cannot guarantee applicants by mail will get enrolled in time. It takes 3 to 5 days to process an application for eligibility, not including time spent in the mail or selecting a plan.
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