“We’re not going to let anybody go without insurance,” Patrick said. “It’s not going to happen. We have an obligation here that is an obligation in law and we have a moral obligation — and a commitment.”
The Connector’s spokesperson says this:
“We still have a lot of work … but we are doing what we set out to do.”
As fed up Beacon Hill lawmakers plan to grill Health Connector officials on the state’s botched Obamacare website today, one frustrated Southboro man — who claims his family is now uninsured even though his payment for February was cashed — said he’s ready to launch a one-man sit-in at the Health Connector’s Boston office until he gets answers.
“If I can’t get any further on the phone tomorrow (today), I may just march down there and refuse to leave until they give it to me,” said Dan Ginsburg. “I’m actually serious. I consider it a serious issue that my family doesn’t have insurance. I have a small 16-month-old child. It puts us at risk of financial problems.”
He has health insurance because of the intervention of Sen. Jamie Eldridge and Rep. Carolyn Dykema.
Eric Borden, 26, of Kenmore, said he has called the connector several times because he was unable to apply through the website, but he has yet to receive a response.
“I was told I was going to get an email back from IT [but] I never received the email [and] I still haven’t gotten anything,” he said. “It’s been about a month, month-and-a-half and I have no status update on whether or not I’m covered. I called last week and was told to call Mass. Health to see if I could get temporary coverage and when I called them they said they had no record of my application or anything.”
At this point, it’s not so much that the Plan A of the new website failed so badly. It’s that Plan B — the phone calls, paper applications, old-fashioned stuff — is also failing catastrophically. And it’s been three months since the governor said the site was improving day by day. And now March 1 approaches.
pogo says
How many state legislators does it take to get your insurance from the Health Connector?
sleeples says
This is a serious issue. I went on the site to see what is available, and was unable to get past the first few clicks before it was frozen up. I spent about 30 minutes retrying and couldn’t even determine what I might qualify for (it got stuck before entering any personal information even).
Now for me, this isn’t an emergency situation right now, but for a lot of people it is. Thanks for bringing this problem up so more people can see how we are quietly failing people right now with poor implementation.
kregan67 says
That in 2014, a Website could work so poorly, have so many blind alleys that lead to dead-ends and all but burst into flames when it is asked to interact with another agency’s database. Also: Why does it feel like the staffing at the connector hasn’t been beefed up to handle the flood of phone calls?
But the issues go well beyond the technical. I am forced to reapply even though I purchased a plan through the Connector late in 2012, leading me to wonder: Why was the state still allowing the sale of plans on the Connector that did not conform with ACA at that late date?
I’d ask Gov. Patrick this question, but I’m sure he’d dismiss it as an anecdote.
mannygoldstein says
As it happens, my family needs to transition to a new health insurance plan at the end of this month. So this kinda sucks.
As it also happens, my day job is in consulting and writing about the development of big, complex, scary systems. So I downloaded the MITRE review of the connector website development woes, just released a week or two ago.
Not pretty. Lots of things that are concerning. To me, the most concerning is that they seem to not have a good set of requirements:
This might sound arcane, but for a project like this, unless there are rock-solid requirements that all parties agree on, the thing will be a continual mess because different folks will have a different understanding of what they’re trying to achieve.
Seems like it may be a while before we have a site.
rcmauro says
This didn’t get much play at the time but there’s an interesting interview on this topic with Rep. Marjorie Decker on WGBH. http://wgbhnews.org/post/website-woes-fixing-health-connector
Sorry to revive a dead thread, but I found this worth watching for some insight into what the legislature is asking about.