The back end glitches in Obamacare

Very few of the individuals trying to buy health insurance are getting through to all the steps of the federal ACA website and using it successfully.  But once they register, they still may not have actual coverage plans, with successes running at what is (possibly) a one in one hundred rate:

As few as 1 in 100 applications on the federal exchange contains enough information to enroll the applicant in a plan, several insurance industry sources told CNBC on Friday. Some of the problems involve how the exchange’s software collects and verifies an applicant’s data.

“It is extraordinary that these systems weren’t ready,” said Sumit Nijhawan, CEO of Infogix, which handles data integrity issues for major insurers including WellPoint and Cigna, as well as multiple Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliates.

Experts said that if Healthcare.gov‘s success rate doesn’t improve within the next month or so, federal officials could face a situation in January in which relatively large numbers of people believe they have coverage starting that month, but whose enrollment applications are have not been processed.

There is more here, via Megan McArdle, who for years has been predicting major problems with the web sites.  By the way, these are not fundamentally problems of high usage or high demand.

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