Health exchange still buggy

The Hawaii Health Connector said it enrolled 3,500 residents in medical insurance in the first month of this year’s open enrollment period, a stark contrast to the fewer than 300 sign-ups in the same period a year ago.

Despite the stronger numbers, the state’s health insurance exchange, created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, continues to have technical problems.

Customers reported problems on the website that left them unable to enroll, and some are still having to sign up via phone or in person.

"I admit and apologize for the fact we are not yet fully functional," said Jeff Kissel, the Connector’s executive director. "We need human support for people to have a good enrollment experience sometimes. We’re a lot better, but we’re not perfect."

Some of the issues include customers not being able to enroll on mobile devices such as tablets or smartphones. People who applied last year also may be experiencing problems because they have "some bad data in the system" that must be manually cleared out, said Kissel, who took on the job as head of the Connector on Oct. 13.

"In less than 20 minutes anyone can be enrolled if they call in," Kissel said.

Patty Kroh of Pahoa, Hawaii island, told the Associated Press that she waited five days to get a phone call returned after being unable to enroll as a new customer on the website. Kroh, 58, complained on the Connector’s Facebook page, and after sending messages through the social networking website a staff member called her back and said that they’d had the wrong phone number on file, she said.

Jillian Marohnic, co-owner of Volcano Hideaways, a small company that does vacation rentals in Volcano, Hawaii island, wanted to browse through the options to see if she should change plans, but when she interacted with the website she kept getting error messages.

"This year I thought it was going to be easy because all we had to do was renew, but I logged into that account and of course it still didn’t work, 14 months later," she told the AP.

Open enrollment started Nov. 15 and continues until Feb. 15. Monday was the deadline for consumers to enroll if they wanted coverage to begin on Jan. 1.

To date, an estimated 13,500 Hawaii residents have signed up for health insurance through the online marketplace.

The organization is seeking to enroll many of the estimated 75,000 Hawaii residents who are currently uninsured — 5.5 percent of the population.

The troubled online marketplace, which received $204.3 million in federal grants, signed up about 10,000 people in its first year after a series of computer glitches and a late start in October 2013. This is the first time consumers are able to re-enroll on the exchange.

"The system was so badly broken last year you couldn’t even tell who applied," Kissel said.

In the first year, more than 11,000 applicants were held up because the state Department of Human Services, which administers Medicaid, didn’t collect information the Connector needed to determine whether individuals were eligible for tax credits to help pay for their health insurance.

Consumers seeking to lower the cost of insurance can apply for tax credits only through the Connector but must first be deemed ineligible for Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor, by DHS.

"We have implemented a file transfer system with DHS to ensure that any application submitted to DHS is processes as quickly as possible," Eric Alborg, the Connector’s deputy executive director, said in an email.

"We’ve dramatically improved the IT system."

To enroll online, go to hawaiihealthconnector.com. The Connector’s call center is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. The call center can be reached at 877-628-5076.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.