Covered California makes me want to vote Republican

The bureaucratic ineptitude, arrogance, dysfunction of Covered California has pushed me to consider voting for a Republican if the California Health Benefits Exchange was run by an elected office holder. Unfortunately, Covered California is one of those miserable fungi-like monopolistic bureaucracies that is accountable to no one and is above reproach. Covered California makes the DMV look like good.

Covered  California refuses to find missing applications

I’ve tolerated the many failures of Covered California until yesterday when they absolutely refused to help an applicant that has been left without health insurance. Miss B’s situation where her application has mysteriously become lost after allegedly being transmitted to the carrier is not unique to me or Covered California. Within hours of one another, I submitted an application for Miss B and her housemate. The housemate’s application was received by the carrier and an invoice issued. The carrier has no record of Miss B’s enrollment application. She is in the uninsured wilderness along with her daughter.

No explanation, no help, no hope

The response to the missing application from Covered California, as it has been in so many instances before this, was to call the carrier. Covered California refused to take any responsibility, offer any help or explanation beyond the threadbare response of “we can re-submit it.” Miss B, like many other Californians, and I have spent hours on hold with Covered California and the carrier to resolve the issue. In every correspondence with Covered California they offer the same lame bureaucratic stonewalling response.

Spineless Democrats are silent

Covered California is aggravating the same health care denial of service they were founded to ameliorate: families missing doctor appointments, paying for appointments and prescriptions out-of-pocket and heightened anxiety over the future of their health. The single biggest disappointment is the silence of elected Democratic officials that have run on a platform to help low and moderate income households get access to affordable health insurance. I am ashamed to be a Democrat as both party and elected representatives ignore the misery Covered California is inflicting on California residents.

Miserable customer experience

Covered California’s Executive Director, Peter Lee, in his many long-winded introductions, constantly stresses that the California’s Health Benefits Exchange is consumer focused and dedicated to creating a positive consumer experience. While I am entirely sure there have been one or two souls that are happy with their new ACA health plans, I and many other Certified Insurance Agents and Certified Enrollment Counselors have a long list of people who have been given the middle finger by Covered California. The staff and management at Covered California feel their responsibility ends when they magically transmit the application to the carrier.

Huge loss of productivity

By Covered California’s own admission they have wasted the time of thousands of residents. By the bumbling and stumbling of the Covered California website and staff they helped contribute to over 48,000 hours of lost or reduced productivity in one week.

December 29 – January 4
Total Call Volume	65,206
Average wait time in minutes	45
Total minutes on hold	2,934,270
Total hours of lost or reduced productivity	48,905

Covered California class action lawsuit

An equal number of hours have been wasted with residents and agents on “hold” trying to speak with the insurance company about the lack of invoices and lost applications. This is nothing to be proud of and it is verging on malfeasance through lack of due diligence and failing to perform their duties. I am not one to promote a litigious atmosphere, but the poor performance of Covered California along with the pain and suffering they have heaped on countless families seems to be ripe for a class action lawsuit.

Typical bureaucratic monopoly

Covered California has a monopoly on granting the tax credits that make health insurance affordable. They are acting like a classic government monopoly who refuses address any short comings with respect to customer service or finishing the job they started. They know nothing will happen to them because they are virtually untouchable. They are funded with federal grants and the U.S. Department Health and Human Services which oversees the grants is too mired down in their own problems to address the abuses of power in California.

Covered California indifference

These lost applications may be the carrier’s problem but that is no reason for Covered California to turn its back on the customer. The call center staff is trotted out like pawns to repeat the same worn out phrase of telling the applicants to call the carrier while the managers cower in their cubicles to avoid public scrutiny. The absence of any proactive attempt to resolve the issue of missing applications is nothing less than indifferent negligence. Covered California created the mess and chaos and they refuse to fix it.

Blow up the boxes

It is the hair pulling frustration of agencies like Covered Californian that push people to vote for the hollow promises of bureaucratic reform by Republicans. I’d vote for Republicans if I thought they could fix the nightmare at Covered California. To paraphrase one Republican who left office with his tail between his legs, “It’s time to blow up the boxes.” That rhetoric only serves to buy votes and is never rooted in reality. All the GOP wants to do is pump up corporate profits at the public’s expense. Republicans don’t care about extending health care services to everyone. The Republican platform for health care reform revolves around creating leper colonies and banning abortion.

Californians abandon by ACA

The sad reality is that no political party will actually go to bat for citizens caught in the nightmare of documented failures of a bureaucracy. The Board of Covered California fully understands the political and bureaucratic realities. Covered California can continue to waste everyone’s time, pass the buck, send out meaningless emails admonishing people to pay an invoice they never receive, and continue to spend millions of grant money to burnish their image as the holy grail of affordable health care. In the mean time, the people Covered California was created to help are left with no insurance, no help and very little hope.

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Jan. 7, 2013

COVERED CALIFORNIA RELEASES STATISTICS FOR ITS HEALTH INSURANCE MARKETPLACE FOR WEEK ENDING JAN. 4

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Covered California™ and the Department of Health Care Services released updated numbers showing that consumer interest in theagency’s health insurance marketplace and Medi-Cal remains strong. The number of enrollment applications started continues to increase from 1,064,872 on Dec. 29 to 1,157,798 through Jan. 4.

Data in this release is updated and posted every Tuesday on CoveredCA.com.

Total enrollment during December is scheduled for release in January.