Apparently, this is not enough information to reasonably conclude who I am.
Yesterday was the deadline to apply for health insurance for January 2015 through the Massachusetts Health Connector. I didn’t know this until I saw the media reports about it.
I became a last-minute applicant.
Or, rather, I tried to become a last-minute applicant.
I tried to register over the phone. Didn’t work.
I tried to register online. Didn’t work.
I called my state legislators. The staff of @SenKenDonnelly stepped into the breech and contacted a legislative liaison for the Health Connector, who offered me personal assistance. This, I foolishly spurned thinking that the website would serve me well later and, besides, I was out of state at a client’s office in Connecticut.
But it was to no avail. After multiple attempts, it became clear over the phone in the morning that the Health Connector had no idea who I was. Despite our years of relationship, I was an un-person to them, over the phone in the morning and over the web at night.
The website informed me that the Federal Identification Proofing service could not find me. They had my name, my birth date, my Social Security number, my physical address, my email address, my mobile phone number, and my office number. None of these details has changed lately and several — name, date of birth, Social Security number, have been mine for 57 years old life. The IRS can find me, the Health Connector can pay my doctor bills, but when it comes to knowing who I am … I’m not a person so I’m ineligible to enroll, I guess.
The Globe has a rosy story this morning about the last-minute record at the Health Connector. If the Globe had checked tweets about @HealthConnector, it would have found a number of complaints. See: https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=%40HealthConnector&s=typd.
You can read my blog post elaborating on all this at:
http://daybook.douglassdavidoff.com/post/106037873770/goodnight-my-someone-that-health-insurance-is-not
The post is titled, “Goodnight,My Someone, That Health Insurance is not For You” and subtitled, “In Which My Application to the Health Connector is Confounded by a System That Simply Knows Not My Name.”
See the post at: http://bit.ly/MAhealthconnectorproblem
Sure, I hate to complain. I back Gov. Patrick, and I hold the Health Connector and its enabling policies in high regard. I favor the Massachusetts health insurance system, and I favored the single-payer experiment in Vermont for which Gov. Peter Shumlin just pulled the plug a few days ago. But the Massachusetts Health Connector failed me yesterday. I tried to register under the deadline. No can do. I’m so sorry to report this.
We were told we had until 1 a.m. to complete an application. At 12:25 a.m., after several attempts to simply identify myself, my application to the Health Connector was kaput. What happened to the other 35 minutes?
The health connector is just one of many vital IT services that this government has demonstrated its utter incompetence in providing. Whether through underfunding, too much patronage, or through a passive-aggressive observation that the results of the failure are not so bad (if you believe that government is bad and should be dismantled or rendered impotent), the outcome is the same.
The unemployment website is equally bad (or worse). There have been rumblings about the RMV. The MBTA website is simply a disaster (ever tried to find information about parking for South Station?).
This government long ago dismantled its ability to provide the oversight needed to properly contract and deliver the web services vital in today’s world. Successful privatization of such services depends on competent liason staff, and Massachusetts has long ago “downsized” away those government employees capable of providing that expertise.
Of all the completely absurd experiences I had with the Health Connector last year and this year was the fact that I couldn’t get the Find a Plan button to work.
What did the Health Connector people say about this? “It’s a known problem.”
Who are these people working for an entire year on a system and days before the (moving) deadline acknowledge that the key, critical function — find a *#%@! plan link — doesn’t work.
Are there no high school students out there who can do this?
… however, state IT management is one area where soon-to-be-Gov. Baker may have the potential to improve things.