Exchange Nightmare

Anyone remember Phil Conners? You know the weatherman in the movie Groundhog Day. He's a guy I can relate to.

Loyal readers may remember my post about Jane. She was the lady who is a cancer survivor, exhausted her COBRA, then had to go bare for six months before PCIP would begin. However, the Government shut down the program during her six month window. This left her without coverage.

For the last month we have been trying to get her enrolled through amazon.com, I mean, healthcare.gov. Time and time again we would log in only to get kicked off. We finally made it through to where she was able to pick a plan and put it in her "shopping cart". That was two weeks ago.

Ever since then we keep getting stuck.

It's not for a lack of effort though. She has tried to log on daily. I have done the same on her behalf. We have done "chats" and gotten the same canned answers so many times that I have it memorized.

"Thank you for your interest in the Marketplace and for sharing your feedback. We apologize for any technical difficulties you may be experiencing as you use HealthCare.gov. We know this can be frustrating, and we're working around the clock to improve HealthCare.gov and to make sure your experience with it is a positive one."

Tuesday was different. We logged in, got to the same issue and instead of these great responses we were simply told: "You have to call the toll free number." So we did. It was 4:30pm Eastern time when we got Shelby on the line. Outside of being cold, monotone, and unfriendly she was a very pleasant woman to talk to. After reading her script she was able to use my clients' information to log in and see the exact same thing we were seeing! In fact she got the same spinning hourglass that went round and round. Then she told us what we figured was coming:

"I'm sorry, this is our peak time. There are too many people on the system and your going to have the same problems if you try again. You need to try again later."

With that we bid farewell to Shelby and I told my client that I would try and log in after hours. On Wednesday I logged in at 7:30am. Had the same issue and called 1-800-GOOD-LUCK again. This time it was Markeeta on the line. She read me her script (same as Tuesday) and logged in with me just like Shelby had done. This time I was told:

"I'm sorry, this is our peak time. There are too many people on the system and your going to have the same problems if you try again. You need to try again later."

Just as Phil had Ned Ryerson, I have healthcare.gov.