Covered California extends 2015 enrollment deadline
Kevin Knauss
Covered California extends 2015 enrollment deadline.
In response to high call volume for assistance and a website that has gotten slow and started crash at times, Covered California issued and Agent Alert notifying Certified Insurance Agents that they were extending the deadline for 2015 renewals and enrollment until December 21, 2014.
URGENT! You Have Extra Time to Help Consumers Complete Enrollment for January 1st!
Given the high volume of Californians interested in enrolling in health coverage, we’re pleased to announce that Covered California has decided to give our service partners additional time to help consumers get across the finish line and complete enrollment. Service partners will have until midnight on Sunday, December 21, 2014 to assist consumers with enrollment. This applies to both new and renewing consumers enrolling for coverage effective January 1, 2015.Please note that while the Agent Service Center will now be open this Sunday, Dec. 21st (see below for hours), the Covered California Service Center for consumers will be closed this Sunday. You are encouraged to assist consumers with completing their applications as early this week as possible to ensure you receive the assistance you may need from our service center representatives. While you and your consumers are given the extra time, we would appreciate your help in communicating expectations: completing enrollment after December 15th may delay invoices and proof of enrollment from the health plan the consumer has chosen. We encourage all consumers to make a binder payment when possible to facilitate faster enrollment in their chosen plan.
We will be providing further information about payment deadlines as soon as possible. In order to accommodate this change within the system, we will be taking the online system down starting midnight tonight until approximately 7 a.m.tomorrow, Tuesday, Dec. 16.
Password purgatory
Numerous callers told me they were having problems getting the Covered California website to accept any password they created. Any combination of letters and numbers always elicited a website response that the password could not be a word found in the dictionary. More than a few people used words that are on George Carlin’s list of seven dirty words you can’t utter to express their frustration. This stymied many people from even creating accounts which may be one reason why CoveredCA decided they needed to extend the deadline while they fixed the pass word problem.
Will this be a conditional extension?
Covered California extended the deadline last year but consumers had to have started an application by the 15th of December. In addition, only Certified Insurance Agents and Certified Enrollment Counselors were able to continue processing those applications after the deadline. There is no mention of those conditions in this announcement. But to be on the safe side, make every attempt to create an account and enroll, even if the website crashes.
