Employee Benefit News for School, City and County Employers

State-run exchanges also experience enrollment errors

Written by Valerie Ortiz | Dec 10, 2013 2:03:57 PM

Many of the 14 states who opted to bypass using the federal government's Healthcare.gov site are now experiencing similar technical issues of their own, according to Reason. 

The success rate of the individual states that chose to build their own state-run exchanges have been hard to predict, with substantial success seen in some states and systemic issues in others. For example, Maryland was proactive in designing and testing their site to ensure it would function at optimal levels and be able to sustain a high capacity of shoppers, leading many in the state to believe the site would see large volumes of enrollees with minimal glitches. However, Maryland and two other states have recently parted ways with executives instrumental to their exchange sites, further complicating access to coverage for many Americans. 

Currently, the Healthcare.gov site has had problems transmitting submitted personal information from applicants to insurers for as many as 10 percent of customers, The New York Times reported. States hoped to mitigate those issues by creating sites of their own, however states like Kentucky say they've noticed more than 834 erroneous enrollment forms at the state-level and are unsure of the extent of lost information, Politico reported. 

"While there is significant variation from state to state, health plans in many state-based exchanges are seeing similar problems with enrollment files," said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, to Politico.