On August 4th Covered California rolled out another enhancement to their CalHEERS program called “identity proofing”. Before an account holder, Covered California customer service representative (CSR) or Certified Insurance Agent can either Report a Change or create a new enrollment for a health plan, the primary applicant’s identity must be verified. This “Identity Proofing”, as it is called, may present a technical challenge for some users of the CalHEERS program and cause delays for others.
December 2014
Several consumers have contacted me and said the federal hub system is chronically unavailable to proof their identity. Covered California mentioned they were having some problems early in December with the system being down. Agents and Certified Enrollment Counselors have the ability to upload a picture of a consumer’s drivers license or other document to verify identity. If the federal HUB is not working for you, contact a Certified Enrollment Counselor or Certified Insurance Agent to see if they can assist with identity proofing. I’ve used the federal on several occasions and it hasn’t been down for me.
From Covered California additional instructions if all else fails-
- In person: You can apply in person with a certified Covered California enrollment representative. You will need to show a document (or documents) that will prove your identity. There are many different kinds of proof of identity that you can use, including your driver’s license. Once the certified Covered California enrollment representative has confirmed your identity, the person helping you can start your application. To search for a representative in your area, click here.
- Mail or electronic upload: If you are unable to have your identity confirmed or choose not to use one of the ways listed above, you can mail to Covered California or electronically upload to CoveredCA.com a copy of a proper ID document(or documents). After you mail or upload your ID document, a Covered California Service Center Representative will check your document(or documents) and contact you.
Call Experian
Some consumers will get a message to call the Experian help desk. One client had called twice and they were not able to help. Covered California was not able to help either. While I’m not completely sure if this was the issue, the client had included the suffix Sr. in the last name field. There is a separate drop down box for suffixes that any Jr. or Sr. should be enter. However, the client emailed me an image of his driver’s license which I uploaded. Immediately upon uploading the proof of identity image and changing the suffix we were able to proceed with the application.
Calling Experian or Covered California may not resolve the issue. Uploading an ID document such as a driver license will allow you or your agent to proceed with the application.
Identity confirmation methods
Proof of the primary applicant’s identity can be archived in three ways
- Visual confirmation and uploading the picture ID
- Remote verification where identity is confirmed through a series of questions
- Sending in a paper application with a signature in ink
Download the official instructions at the end of the post.
Applicant must agree to identity proofing
The online web pages and questions to initiate the identity proofing process will look slightly different depending on whether the application is started by the primary applicant, Covered California CSR, Certified Enrollment Counselor or Certified Insurance Agent. The first step with the online CalHEERS enrollment program is that the applicant must agree to have their identity confirm by Covered California. From there, proof of identity will either be from uploaded documents or what Covered California calls Remote Identity Proofing (RIDP).
Upload a picture document
The visual proof of identity process requires either one photo ID or two vital statistic documents without a picture to prove identity. For agents or Covered CA CSRs working with clients over the phone this might present a problem. Unless the client can either scan or snap a picture of the documents and easily email them, the change report or new application can’t go forward. If visual proof is selected, the system will prompt the user to upload the images.
Experian connects to federal data hub
An alternative to visual inspection and uploading of documents is sending the applicant’s information to the Federal Data Hub Services (FDHS) for identity confirmation. The remote identification proofing (RIDP) sends the primary applicant’s information to Experian who checks the information against the Federal Data Services Hub (FDSH). Experian then returns to the CalHEERS user is a series of questions that, presumably, only the real applicant can answer thereby confirming the identity. The identity confirmation questions can range from previous street addresses, mortgage applications, cities the applicant has lived in to the number of rooms in their house.
Hub Response: applicant is deceased
Critical to the identity proofing process is that the correct name and address is used. All that information needs to match with the records that may be on file with the federal system. The mismatch of the identity information can cause the system not to be able to perform the remote identification process. The RIDP is supposed to spit out a Hub Response Code that matches to the problem encountered. The range of system errors in retrieving the data can vary from a system outage, current address mismatch; social security number mismatch or the applicant is reported as deceased. If the RIDP doesn’t work, the alternatives are either verification by uploading documents or sending in a paper application.
| Hub Response Code | Hub Response Description Text |
| HE200001 | Consumer is a minor |
| HE200002 | Information on the inquiry was reported as fraud by the consumer |
| HE200003 | Invalid surname or less than two characters in length |
| HE200004 | One or more requested reports unavailable at this time. Please resubmit later |
| HE200005 | Components of checkpoint system temporarily unavailable. Please resubmit |
| HE200008 | Not all data available for Experian Detect evaluation |
| HE200009 | Experian Detect temporarily unavailable |
| HE200010 | Precise ID system temporarily unavailable |
| HE200013 | SSN required to access consumer’s file |
| HE200014 | Unable to standardize current address |
| HE200015 | Current Address exceeds maximum length |
| HE200016 | Input validation error |
| HE200018 | Session timeout (forKIQ product options only). Note: 710 may also be returnedif the Session ID does not exist (for KIQ product responses only) |
| HE200020 | Other Precise ID system error |
| HE000050 | Cannot formulate questions for this consumer. Please contact Experian Customer Service. |
| Note: This code will be received for the following scenarios | |
| · User is reported as deceased | |
| · User does not exist in Experian’s system | |
| · User is blocked |
Nothing beats paper, for a slow process
With the exception of sending in a paper application with a signature, the electronic identity confirmations could still fail in one way or another. The failure will result in a delay of the change to the account or submission of an application. With the initiation of identity proofing, people trying to fill out their application on the last possible day for the soonest effective date may find they are unable to complete the process.
A new wrinkle to be ironed out
This identity proofing is a new wrinkle in the Covered California ACA health plan enrollment process and very few people know how it will really work out. If you have had experiences with either the visual confirmation or remote identity proofing, let us know what tips you have to make the process smoother for others. I’ll add more to the post as I begin to interact and fight with the system on behalf of my clients.
The following PDF is the instructions for the identity proofing send to certified agents and includes the Hub Response Error Code descriptions.
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