Since Oct. 1st, I have tried to sign onto healthcare.gov NUMEROUS times to register for insurance. I have also tried to sign on for my sister through the Maryland healthcare connection site. The reports on Daily Kos of those who have succeeded in getting registered through the sites are indeed encouraging but I continue to find the process very frustrating and seemingly impossible! It would not even be so bad if it were just a long slow process but was progressing. Instead, on both sites, I continue to get partially through the sites and the screens go backwards and erase everything I have entered, tell me the phone number does not have the appropriate number of dashes when it does, ask for certain formatting for birth dates when the site has a drop down calendar to use to select a birthdate and sometimes I get partway through and it just stops and says come back later because the site is down. When I go back, I have to try again, re typing much of what I did the last try. It is truly enough to make one crazy.
I am a huge fan of the ACA but this is ridiculous. I want insurance and can't get it. Now for Maryland, I did call the help line and the people on the phone were very helpful, acknowledged the site was having problems and suggested I print off the application, complete it by hand and mail it in to sign up. I will do that but that is not the way it is supposed to work and in this day and age, it is extremely inefficient. There is no way someone who is being required to buy insurance but is not fully committed would continue. Defending such a system to opponents is also very difficult.
I wonder if these sites are being sabotaged. It is hard to imagine that those responsible for the development of these sites in the Obama administration can be this incompetent. They knew there would be huge demand and now, two weeks after the release, the sites are still not working properly. What's up?