The Part of HealthCare.gov That’s Supposed To Fix Mistakes Hasn’t Even Been Built Yet

Not only did the glitch-filled HealthCare.gov make mistakes on tens of thousands of consumers applications, but the broken website doesn’t have the capacity to fix the errors.

According to a new report from the Washington Post, at least 22,000 Americans have filed appeals with the Obama Administration to try and get the mistakes on their applications fixed, contending that the broken website charged them too much, put them into the wrong plan, or blocked them from coverage entirely.

Those appeals are sitting in a government computer, and employees at HealthCare.gov aren’t allowed to access them.

That’s because the infrastructure necessary for ObamaCare employees to review and process those complaints hasn’t even been built yet.

It’s not surprising that HealthCare.gov can’t fix mistakes on consumers’ applications, which were thanks to a website that doesn’t work, because another part of the website doesn’t work.

From the Washington Post:

Tens of thousands of people who discovered that HealthCare.gov made mistakes as they were signing up for a health plan are confronting a new roadblock: The government cannot yet fix the errors.

Roughly 22,000 Americans have filed appeals with the government to try to get mistakes corrected, according to internal government data obtained by The Washington Post. They contend that the computer system for the new federal online marketplace charged them too much for health insurance, steered them into the wrong insurance program or denied them coverage entirely.

For now, the appeals are sitting, untouched, inside a government computer. And an unknown number of consumers who are trying to get help through less formal means — by calling the health-care marketplace directly — are told that HealthCare.gov’s computer system is not yet allowing federal workers to go into enrollment records and change them, according to individuals inside and outside the government who are familiar with the situation.

…

The exchange is supposed to allow consumers who want to file appeals to do so by computer, phone or mail. But only mail is available. The roughly 22,000 people who have appealed to date have filled out a seven-page form and mailed it to a federal contractor’s office in Kentucky, where the forms are scanned and then transferred to a computer system at CMS. For now, that is where the process stops. The part of the computer system that would allow agency workers to read and handle appeals has not been built, according to individuals familiar with the situation.