On the final day to sign up for medical coverage that begins Jan. 1, the Hawaii Health Connector website was still having connectivity issues as a flood of last-minute shoppers tried to enroll.
Over the past four days, the state’s online insurance marketplace created by President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, has seen enrollment increase by more than 25 percent, said Eric Alborg, the Connector’s deputy executive director.
As of Monday there were 1,776 individuals enrolled and 284 employers who had applied for coverage.
"What we found is that there was an error in the system at about 1:50 p.m.," Alborg said. "We immediately identified the issue, brought down the system for about an hour and brought the system back up with full functionality. This is an issue we identified once before, and we’re in a continual process of making sure this is improved."
Still, the process has been "unbelievably aggravating" for Eddy Conway, a 62-year-old systems administrator whose medical insurance ends when he retires Dec. 31. The downtown Honolulu resident still didn’t know Tuesday whether his enrollment had gone through after trying for more than 10 weeks.
"I have been ‘enrolled,’ according to the Health Connector website, but the policy I chose from (Hawaii Medical Service Association) cannot be started because the Health Connector has failed to hand enrollment information to HMSA or HMSA did not receive it or HMSA received and cannot find it," he said. "The two parties told me to wait."
Conway recently stayed online continuously for 6 1/2 hours to get through the enrollment process.
"I found that various Web pages at the site would stall and hang, and databases would be unavailable and that logins would be denied after a Web page had crashed," he said. "In all, I had to do four logins, and the website blew up several times."
The Connector, the only place consumers and small businesses can apply for subsidies to reduce the cost of insurance, extended the enrollment deadline through Tuesday, following a decision by the Obama administration to delay Monday’s cutoff date by one day to "accommodate the high demand in last-minute enrollments." It was the second time the deadline was pushed back. Consumers originally had until Dec. 15 to sign up for coverage starting Jan. 1.
The enrollment extension is the latest in a series of postponed deadlines and delays that have marked the rollout of the health care law. The federal government also extended the payment deadline for Obamacare plans to Jan. 10. People who missed Tuesday’s deadline have until Jan. 15 to sign up for a policy that takes effect Feb. 1. Open enrollment runs through March.
For enrollment questions, call the customer service support center at 877-628-5076.
