<p>“Covered California expects to enroll 500,000 to 700,000 people in the six-month open-enrollment period that begins today. Businesses with up to 50 full-time-equivalent employees can enroll in the small-business group program at any time.”</p>
<p>All I can say is that the process of actually getting a bill and making a payment has been a lot easier in the past. </p>
<p>I think there also may have been a lot of confusion in January because of delays – there may have been people who wanted to sign up for coverage Jan 1, but because of computer issues didn’t manage to sign up until after the deadline and thought that their coverage would only begin Feb 1, and then were waiting for a bill that never came. There was some weird stuff going on at the Covered Cal web site that would have lead to that result for probably thousands of subscribers – it had to do with some confusion about extended deadlines which the web site software couldn’t accommodate and had to be fixed manually by agents. </p>
<p>The verification process is very painful. We have enrolled 4 people but 3 others went into verification heaven. We called the number for one of them and after spending 30 minutes they gave yet another number to call. So we are lining up people to call tomorrow.</p>
<p>Texaspg, the verification issue is on the federal website, correct? Do you have any idea why your people are having trouble getting verified? Foreign born?</p>
<p>I haven’t heard stories about verification “heaven” recently, but a few months ago, people who checked in to the verification hotel never checked out, and the only solution was starting over. Not sure what’s happening now.</p>
<p>The verification is an unusual process where they ask very random questions which depends on your memory quite a bit. One of them was asked about validating a correct phone number (multiple choice question) and it was one of several numbers his college son went through a few years ago. He could not pick the right one and it went into verification. The other two were expected since they are on a visa status. </p>
<p>Deadline to enroll for coverage on April 1st is March 15th based on what popped up after registration.</p>
<p>TatinG, we’ve discussed this here before, but you don’t have to pay a tax penalty if your insurance is not “affordable,” where “affordable” is defined as costing more that 8% of your Modified Adjusted Gross Income.</p>
<p>ONE MILLION PAID…IN ONE STATE…CALIFORNIA !!!</p>
<p>Very few people give a crap about the old plans… There are only 500,000 individuals left with old individual plans…in the United States of America.</p>
<p>That’s a standard set of credit bureau questions which is used to prevent identity fraud. I think generally you have to get 2 questions wrong to fail the check. </p>
<p>And it’s a Healthcare.gov thing-- the California exchange isn’t using it. </p>
<p>I thought this was my idea. I just mentioned this a couple of days ago…</p>
<p>“So I think insurance companies are going to get into providing health care as well as insuring, and hospitals are going to begin providing insurance as well as providing the care. You’re going to see these, what I call “integrated delivery systems” that’s going to be the dominant mode. So you’re going to buy your insurance from maybe Cleveland Clinic, maybe Mayo, maybe Johns Hopkins, instead of from an insurance company.”</p>
<p>This might be slightly different than I suggested. Maybe. :)</p>
<p>For the two people with visa issues, I don’t know any answer. But for the person who was unable to answer the credit bureau questions, I’d suggest canceling the application and starting over. Presuming that he is who he says he is, I don’t think it’s fraudulent in any way to take another try.</p>
<p>“If you can’t find something new to post, maybe it’s better to just not post instead of rehashing your old complaints for the 100th time.”</p>
<p>But it is okay for you to post the same Obamacare cheerleading posts everyday for almost 6 months even if the facts get in the way of your preconceived fantasy of how the law is working.</p>
<p>All coming from someone who doesn’t even have an Obamacare plan.</p>
<p>Oh goody, GP is back? It’s been so pleasant around here the last couple of days. Is there anything new or is he whining about the same stuff he’s been whining about since November? </p>
<p>An excellent article from Bloomberg about how few uninsured Obamacare is helping, the raison d’ etre of Obamacare. Here is a quote:</p>
<p>“It should also make us question the whole decision to include the exchanges in Obamacare, because in this telling, they’re mostly giving subsidies to folks who were already buying insurance. Of course, they may be very happy about their subsidies, but I doubt that “subsidize people who are already buying insurance” would have been in the Top 10 on anyone’s policy agenda. A clean Medicaid expansion probably would have delivered more coverage at less risk of destroying the individual insurance market.”</p>