Employee Benefit News for School, City and County Employers

More than 15,000 Healthcare.gov submissions lost

Written by Valerie Ortiz | Dec 17, 2013 2:36:22 PM

Technical issues associated with the Affordable Care Act's federal insurance exchange website may be nearing an end, but not before 15,000 user submissions were lost in translation, according to The Washington Post. After shoppers submitted required personal information through the insurance exchange portal that was intended to be received by insurers, thousands of 834 documents never found their way out of back-end glitches. The 834 document is an online form where customers fill in and submit personal information. 

Now, the responsibility lies with customers and insurers to double check coverage, although the number of reported incidents appears to be on the decline, the Post suggested. 

"The vast majority of the work is retroactive," said Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the agency overseeing a team of IT administrators tasked with repairing the website. 

The Department of Health and Human Services reported that since December's enrollment numbers have increased, fewer submission errors have occurred and are now "close to zero," according to an HHS blog post, CBS Tampa affiliate WSTP reported. 

The news comes as a relief to many who have yet to buy health insurance, or for those whose information was lost, by the Dec. 23 deadline to qualify for Jan. 1 coverage.