[Latest update: Tuesday, October 15]
Sharing my day-by-day experience signing up for health insurance for 2014. I will update this as events unfold, with past-to-present chronology.
Monday, September 30
I got a letter from my insurance company, BCBS of North Carolina, that my present policy has not been grandfathered (I knew that would be the case) and that I must select a new policy for 2014. My current policy has a $10,000 per person out-of-pocket (PPOOP) maximum. (Yes readers, you may pronounce that acronym “pee-poop.”) The new policy that BCBS suggests is “closest” to what I have now has a $5,500 PPOOP, and the monthly premium they want me to pay is more than 3 times what I am paying now.
I know: I am now 60, and both my wife and I are a year older than what we were last year, and I know that I am now in a pool where pre-existing conditions do not matter, and so the relatively healthy will now help pay for care for the relatively unhealthy in that pool. But I wasn’t expecting a premium increase of this extent, based on what I had heard in the news.
I am anxious to check out HealthCare.Gov tomorrow and see whether I can get a policy with a higher PPOOP and consequently a lower monthly premium.
Tuesday, October 1
This is the first day that HealthCare.Gov is open for business. Like millions of others, all I see there is a screen explaining that the web site is busy, please try again later. My state, North Carolina, in a fit of rebellion, elected not to set up its own health insurance exchange, and so I have to use the same site that two-thirds of the United States is trying to use.
I try again later that evening. After waiting a few minutes at the “site is busy, please wait” screen, I am able to get into the account sign-up area. I entered my name, e-mail address and password and got as far as the security question page (e.g., “Which one of your children do you like best?”) but I could not select any questions to answer. There is nothing there. Dead in the water again. I’ll try again tomorrow.
Wednesday, October 2
Could not access the site at all. Site is busy. So am I.
Thursday, October 3
After the usual wait at the start page, I once again begin the account setup process by entering my name, e-mail address and password. This time, when I get to the security question screen, there are actually security questions to answer. (I was disappointed to see that “Which one of your children do you like best?” was not among them.) I answer the questions and click “Continue.” HealthCare.Gov takes me back to the login page, so that I can enter my newly created username and password. I do so, and it rejects them.
I figure, OK, I guess it may take a while for my account to be registered in your database. I’ll try to log in tomorrow.
Friday, October 4
Today, I go directly to the log in screen and (after the usual wait on the please-stay-on-this-page page) I again enter my username and password. The website still rejects my information as being invalid, tells me to review it, and suggests that I call the 800 number at the Marketplace Call Center. I can’t imagine what navigating the Call Center would be like, if my web experience is any indication, and so I elect to hold off. I figure that something is messed up in the database, so tomorrow I will simply create a new account and try again.
Saturday, October 5
The HealthCare.Gov website is down for maintenance.
Sunday, October 6
I start over, intending to create a new account in HealthCare.Gov. I go through the steps of entering my name, my e-mail address, my user name and passwords. I answer the security questions again, and click the Continue button. The site tells me it cannot create my account at this time, please try again later. It decides to tell me this only after I have entered all the information. I go back to the account setup page and, of course, all the fields are blank as if I had never typed anything in.
This is getting tiresome. I’m not going to deal with the site again today. I am suspecting that the government has hired laid-off programmers from AOL to build the site.
Monday, October 7
Here we go again, this time with time-stamps. At 12:23 pm, I click on the “Apply Now” button and I am directed to my old friend, the “Please Wait” page. At 12:33 pm, the “Get Started” page pops up and I am ready to enter account setup information. At 12:35 pm, I have entered my username, e-mail address, passwords and security questions, and I click on “Create Account”. This displays another “Please Wait” screen. At 12:36 pm, the “Sign Up Unsuccessful” page is displayed, with this message: “Important: Your account couldnt be created at this time. The system is unavailable.” There is a “Try Again” button at the bottom of the page. I click “Try Again”. The site sends me back to the account setup page, with all the information fields blank. Fourteen minutes of my life (and 60 more seconds of yours) wasted.
Thursday, October 10
Waiting a few days helped, but didn’t help. I was able to access the account setup page almost immediately, without any “Please Wait” screen. A promising sign. I once again entered my account setup information, hit the “Continue” button, and was informed that the site couldn’t set up my account because the username was already taken. Whoa, so maybe my account was already active! Progress, of a sort. So I tried logging in with the account name I tried to enter a few days ago. Sorry, that account is invalid!
Undaunted, I tried to create yet another new account with yet another new username, and I answered all the security questions again — the ninth or tenth time I have told them the name of my oldest niece, my mother’s birthplace and my favorite childhood friend.
The result? “We cannot create your account at this time.”
Can I ask a dumb question? Why can’t the website diagnose itself and tell us at the outset, that it cannot do what we want it to do, before we enter all our information? Franz Kafka, phone home.
Tuesday, October 15
This time I waited five days to try again. Programmers can get a lot done in five days, right? Wrong. After I entered my account information, the system idled for a few minutes and then decided that it was unavailable. At this point, I think I will wait until Halloween to return to HealthCare.Gov. What will it be then, Trick or Treat?
My so-called representative, who represents me by dint of Republicans having redrawn district boundaries in an unnatural manner so as to dilute Democratic influence, yes, that person, Mark Meadows of the 11th District in North Carolina — a district more carefully carved than your last prime rib — look at it! — yes, Mark Meadows, one of the six congresspersons from my state of North Carolina to vote against ending the government shutdown, this French-born, Florida-grown (not that I would otherwise hold this against him, if only he seemed more French) person happens to be my representative.
I say “happens to be” with purpose. I get it about majorities and minorities and that one cannot always be part of the majority when you live in a democracy. But when one has moved to a place to take part in a point of view generally held by those living in that place, and when political machinery later dismantles that point of view, not by advancing a better idea but simply by dividing up the adherents of the majority viewpoint… well, one (and by one I mean moi) cannot help but feel cheated.
If Mark Meadows were to advance politically in Washington, D.C., a la Frank Underwood, may I assure you it will have little to do with the thousands he is supposed to represent here in his district, and a lot to do with the thousands contributed to his campaign by the likes of Drake Enterprises (CEO Phil Drake describes himself as “somewhere to the right of Jesse Helms”) and the Koch Brothers (who need no parenthetical explanation).
I disavow my representative and not simply because I didn’t vote for him. My vote and my voice were taken away from me, by cynical forces who disrespect how I think, with no consideration of what I think or how I, or others in this community, have chosen to vote.
I take that back. Those forces considered it. And that is exactly why they dismantled it. Congressman Mark Meadows, if you dislike government so much, why did you bother to get into it? Or do you just go where the money flows?
Those were rhetorical questions.