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

The ObamaCare Paper Pile-Up

The Obamacare Paper Pileup




When HealthCare.gov and some state-run insurance marketplaces ran into trouble with their Web sites in October and November, they urged consumers to submit paper applications.


Now, ProPublica's Charles Ornstein reports , it's time to process all that paper. And with the deadline to enroll in health plans less than two weeks away, there's growing concern that some of these applications won't be processed in time.

Some key points compiled from reporting around the nation:
After a conference call earlier this week with federal health officials, Illinois health officials sent a memo Thursday to their roughly 1,600 navigators saying there is no way to complete enrollment through a paper application.



Covered California in recent days disclosed that it had a backlog of 25,000 paper applications that had to be processed before the Dec. 23 deadline to sign up for coverage that begins Jan. 1.
In Oregon, a state official disclosed this week that more than 30,000 people who submitted health insurance applications still don't have enrollmentpackets

In Maryland, another state whose exchange has been plagued by difficulties, 8,500 paper applications were pending as of last week.

In Vermont, there is a backlog of 1,210 applications, some dating back to as early as Oct. 30.
It does not look good for a smooth transition to a January 1 startup date.  Even for those who have enrolled there have been no reports as to who has received premium billings. That is the bottom line......no $$ no insurance. Perhaps our government should automatically pay the premiums for the first 90 days to make up for their negligence, and not really giving a damn if this works.

The full story is available here: http://www.propublica.org/article/the-obamacare-paper-pileup

- See more at: http://digitalhealthspace.blogspot.com/#.dpuf