My Personal Experience with Healthcare.gov: How I Tried and Failed to Enroll

With all the talk lately about healthcare.gov I decided to give it a whirl, see if all the doomsayers chanting that the site was an abject failure were right.  I also had my own personal motivations, of course: I am currently uninsured, priced out of the existing health care market because of my status as a self-employed independent contractor.  So you could say I set out on my adventure hoping that the naysayers were wrong and that I would find myself some affordable health insurance.

During the years I have been uninsured I have never become sick, so in some sense view health insurance as an unnecessary luxury I cannot afford.   I’m 43, good health, no preexisting conditions.  But the fact that I am just one illness away from financial ruin has always nagged at me.  This worry prompted me many times over the years to explore my options, but the overpriced plans with humongous deductibles that were presented to me were worse than a viable option: they were nothing more than highway robbery that would do little, if anything, to protect me should I actually become sick.  I just could not justify spending more on my health insurance than my mortgage for such skimpy, scant coverage.  As a result, I have been a passive supporter of the president’s initiatives, hoping that the law would fix what my own experience has shown to be a broken system.

So on November 10 at 12 p.m. Central Time I logged onto the site.  At first glance, I was pleasantly surprised.  The site is well-organized and professional, pleasing to the eye with clearly marked tabs to answer common questions and easy to navigate features.  In that, it is a far cry from many out-of-date, poorly designed governmental web sites I have seen and used in the past. 

A notice in bold type at the top of the site caught my eye.  The notice listed various times when the online application would be unavailable.  At least the times were defined.  What struck me was this vague warning:  “Between Saturday evening, November 9 and early morning Tuesday, November 12, there will be times when … you will need to return on Tuesday afternoon to review and submit [your application].”  I interpreted this to mean that there was a strong possibility that I would be able to fill everything out but be required to return in several days to actually apply for coverage. 

With warnings like this that basically admit that all your efforts to apply may be in vain, I can see why many may be deterred from using the site.  But I decided to press forward.  I clicked on my state (Wisconsin, one of the states whose governor defaulted into the federal system) and was instructed to create an account.  I clicked on the large, blue ‘create account’ button at the top of the screen and….nothing happened.  The button gave the impression of being clicked (it turned gray and appeared to be depressing when I clicked on the mouse) but did not take me to an account page.  I continued to click for approximately five minutes to no avail.  I returned 30 minutes later, then an hour later, then two, and was still unable to create an account. 

So in my case, even the dire warnings to the effect that I may be unable to complete my application were inaccurate.  Unable to create an account, I was unable to even begin the process.  This was even worse than what I expected when I set out to enroll.  What I’d expected (and hoped) was to be able to finish the process, see my options, but be required to come back at a later date to actually enroll in coverage.  I plan to return to the site in the coming days, as I’m sure this is no doubt a temporary problem. 

I do have some sympathy with the designers of the site.  It is clearly a massive undertaking and very complex.  It has to account for a large number of individual variations including, for example, providing different sites and systems depending on which state the applicant is from. 

In the interest of fairness, I should note that the site also provides the option of applying by phone instead of online, meaning presumably that even with the site’s dysfunction people who call should still be able to enroll (I didn’t try this option).

I am optimistic that all the assurances we’ve heard will come true: that the site will eventually be fixed and everyone who wants to will ultimately be able to enroll.  What is unfortunate is the deterrence.  Obamacare needs people to enroll to be successful.  The site’s problems may very well deter the very populations they need for success: those, like me, who are relatively young and healthy but who want coverage to assuage that nagging doubt at the back of their mind that they could be ruined by an unplanned illness.  It is this sector of the population, raised on the internet and the flawless workings of Amazon.com, who will be least sympathetic to the failures of the site. 

The problems discredit what in many respects is a good and noble program to fix a broken market.  As an uninsured American I support Obamacare and hope that the site’s defects will ultimately be resolved.  But Obamacare now has a black eye that will be hard to overcome.  In addition, the problems harden a stereotype harbored by many in the population that if, given the chance, the government will invariably screw things up. 

There were many who wanted Obamacare to fail, and this unfortunate, unnecessary screw-up provided them with the ammunition – the proof – they craved.