It's day two of Healthcare.gov's Market Place being open. I hope most of you have been successful. The web site is up. It is slow. The activity is far more than what was expected. At least the media is discussing healthcare.gov and how to navigate the web site. Unfortunately, they are more focused on how slow it is and not the web traffic through put which is far greater than what Medicare.gov handles. They aren't telling us that lots and lots of people are signing up. About 30 million uninsured are expected to be able to get insurance under the ACA and about 10 million people were able to log into the exchanges yesterday. That is major internet traffic and it's exceeding anticipated traffic. A great problem to have, but a little annoying if you are trying to get into the exchange.
I cannot serve as a Market Place Navigator or a support rep for the web site, but I have made through the process and can review the health plans available to me. I understand the ACA law (mostly because I have the credentials needed to teach Health Care Compliance on a college level). I wrote about that last Sunday. I was asked to repost that diary, but I decided to do something new. You can read last Sunday's post if you'd like. There's lots of good information in the comment thread.
As requested, I'm back and ready to answer any questions you might have about the ACA.
Basic information is below the flourish.
Market Place Basics
Healthcare.gov works better in IE. It wasn't well behaved in Mozilla or Chrome.
1. Have patience. You may have to wait an hour before it will allow you to create an account. Crating an account is done in three states. The third part of the account creation asks you to set three security questions. If you get there and you see blanks for the security questions, you have to start over. This happened to me about 4-5 times before I was able to create my account. Your user name will need to be a combination of upper and lower case letters with a number or symbol. Same goes for your password.
2. Have patience. The application seems to be pinging the server after every entry which is really slow. You will need to set yet a fourth security question. It will ask you some creepy questions about you and once you are clear you can enter personal information about you and your family in four sections. It will take a while to get through the income section if you don't use your 2012 tax information they already have on file. I can't because what we are making now is very different than what we claimed in 2012. If you have to enter different income, don't freak out if you see $0.00 for your monthly income on the review page. If you click the edit button on the review page, you'll go through the whole tedious section again. Once all the application info is in, you click submit and you move onto reviewing plans.
3. Have patience. I stopped at the plan selection. I live in Broward County Florida and have 9 insurance companies offering 132 Silver and Gold plans. I didn't check the Platinum plans and there's 70 more Bronze plans. I didn't check how many catastrophic plans there are because I don't want one of those.
4. Have patience. Watch out for the timing out the system. If you aren't careful your session will exceed the 1 hour session estimated to be what you need to make your selections. A Windows dialog box will appear (and in my case, disappear under the windows on the screen) asking if you want to extend your session another 30 minutes. If you ignore or don't see the dialog box, you session ends five minutes later mid click.
5. Have patience.
6. Did I mention Have patience?
7. Impatient? Maybe you should try the website around 4 am or try it next week when the initial surge of web activity subsides.
ACA Basics
1. If insurance premiums exceed 8% of your household income you will not incur a penalty.
2. If your employer's insurance costs you more than 9.5% of your household income, you can shop for cheaper on the exchange and bring your subsidies with you.
3. Medicaid Expansion - In states that went for the expansion, the Medicaid asset test is GONE. The only thing that matters is your income. In states that didn't take the expansion, the asset test is still there and you'll have to look it up for your state. Florida it's $2,000 or $5,000 in liquid and semi-liquid assets.
4. If you are an ex-pat, you are still subject to ACA; this year it looks like if you can prove your foreign residence on an IRS form, you won't incur the penalty. Keep posted that could change for 2015.
That sums up the basics, so let me know if you have any questions about the ACA. I will answer quickly anything I don't have to double check. Some stuff will require me to look it up and that will take longer.