Insurance Insider on Obamacare Reboot: 'It's Still All Jacked Up'

Insurance Insider on Obamacare Reboot: 'It's Still All Jacked Up'

With less than 24 hours to go until its self-imposed November 30 deadline, the Obama administration is scrambling to cobble together a new and improved Obamacare website in the hopes of staunching the president’s and the program’s public opinion nosedive. 

However, insurance industry insiders tell CNN that whatever improvements users may see on the front end merely mask the serious data errors occurring for insurance companies on the back end.

“It’s still all jacked up,” an insurance industry insider told CNN. “If they come out and claim victory over the weekend, it’s just not true.”

The problem, say industry experts, is that the personal information of those enrolling through the healthcare.gov website is not being properly sent to the correct insurance company individuals are selecting. According to CNN, “customers who signed up for coverage are calling the companies with questions and finding they aren’t in the system.”

So will the back end customer insurance data mix up be solved in the next 24 hours?

“There’s no part of us that thinks all of this will be fixed in three days from now,” another industry official told CNN.

Failure to fix Obamacare’s behind-the-scenes insurance technology could result in those who believe they successfully signed up and received coverage arriving at doctor’s offices to find they have no insurance.

The day before Thanksgiving, the Obama administration also announced Obamacare’s small business enrollment platform, which it calls the SHOP system, will not be ready for the November 30 website relaunch and has been delayed another year until after the 2014 midterm elections. 

On the eve of the healthcare.gov website relaunch, Obama officials are busy tamping down expectations. 

“It is not a magical date,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokeswoman Julie Bataille said. “There will be times after November 30 when healthcare.gov does not function properly.”

Obamacare remains deeply unpopular. The latest RealClearPolitics average of polls shows 57% of Americans oppose Obamacare.

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