HealthCare.gov Online User Experiences

Similar to the roll out of Covered California, the nationwide Health.gov exchange was even more flawed and unreachable for more than one month.

Short Videos of Users on the HealthCare.gov Website

The brief videos below highlight some of the challenges faced by the study participants outside California as they used the federal HealthCare.gov website to enroll in health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

• Positive Impressions: Participants had anxiety about applying for health insurance and were surprised and relieved by the ease-of-use and clean look and feel of HealthCare.gov. Watch Video
• Quitting Points: There were several points at which participants abandoned, or would have abandoned, the online process to seek phone or in-person help. Watch Video
• Areas of Uncertainty - General Context: Participants were unsure about some ACA concepts such as "deadlines" and "tax credits," and they didn't always find adequate explanations or help. Watch Video
• Areas of Uncertainty - Site Elements: Some participants had challenges providing income and household information, logging into the system and navigating through certain parts of the site. Watch Video

The Affordable Care Act expands coverage options and provides an opportunity to streamline the enrollment process in public and private coverage. CHCF funded an assessment of HealthCare.gov to identify actionable ways to improve consumer experience with online enrollment.

The assessment uses a methodology not common in the public sector — direct observation of consumers as they move through the website. This technique captures sources of consumer satisfaction, knowledge, confusion, and frustration. The most compelling findings relate to assisting consumers with plan shopping and selection, providing adequate help throughout the process, and ensuring accuracy in consumers' responses to application questions. The report concludes with researchers' recommendations for improvement.

Compare these findings with those of  Covered  California in our earlier blog post.

The California Health Care Foundation also published a study of Health.gov for comparison of states using the national Health.gov website.

Both reports illustrate the poor design and performance characteristics of sites not ready to 'go live'.

Were this a private enterprise it would have stood little chance of success. Supervision and implementation were poor from the bottom to the top of the chain of command.


Health.gov User Experience  download