Ok, so it's mid October, 2013. My COBRA health insurance plan runs out at the end of this year. I've decided that it's time to try the new online marketplace for health insurance. Since I live in Massachusetts, where the health marketplace concept was first tested, I expect it to go fairly well. After all, it's not as if the marketplace hasn't been up and running for a few years. Unfortunately, I was sorely mistaken.
To begin with, it's not as easy as one would expect to find the site. These days, Bing is my favorite search engine, so I set about and tried several web searches ("Where to buy health insurance under Obamacare", "Buy Obamacare", "Buy Health Insurance", "Shop for health insurance",...). Most turned up adds from the insurance companies, and long lists of articles by Obamacare detractors and supporters. Few of the links pointed to the site, but I did finally locate one on Yahoo that sent me to https://www.healthcare.gov/. Then I remembered that it's official title is the Affordable Care Act. Sure enough, the government site pops up as one of the top sites if you search for "Where Can I Buy Affordable Care Act Insurance." I guess the folks at the HealthCare.gov need to do some SEO work to improve their ranking...
Getting from the federal healthcare exchange over to the Massachusetts site was easy. From there though, it was all downhill. I've been at this for about 3 hours so far, and there's not much that works on the site. It's crashed several times -- even dumping fatal access errors embedded in a malformed HTTP response. Sometimes, I think it's sort of working, and I think I might be able to complete a few tasks -- only to run up against a link that crashes or never returns. About the only thing that has worked (sort of) is that I was able to create an account. There's no way to add my family to my account, however, so I'm not sure what good that will do me. I created the account hoping that perhaps some of the errors I was getting were due to the fact that I didn't have one, but I guess that was just wishful thinking on my part.
So, being the nerd that I am, I decided to try Google Chrome. (As a side note, this was my favorite browser until earlier this year, when I switched over to IE 10.). This time, while the site didn't perform well, it did work. While this makes me feel a bit better about the Health Connector site, it's not much. Currently, IE has about 40% of the browser market, IE has 30% Firefox, at about 18% is third. So even assuming that the site works for everything except IE (a fair assumption, since IE tends to go its own way), that means that the site is useless for at least 30% of the population -- far too large a chunk, IMHO.
The good news though is that, all of the plans look to be less expensive (even net out of pocket) than what I'm paying now. My advice to any self-employed or uninsured individual, is give the site a chance -- just make sure you use Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.
For the record, here's a summary of the bugs I've found so far:
1. All testing done on Windows 7, x64 (4 Gb RAM, lots of bandwidth) and IE 10
2. Many pages server up mixed (HTTPS and HTTP) content. For many people, this will violate their default browser security settings, causing the site to be unusable. All content should be served via HTTPS.
3. Plan helper is painfully slow. The cursor changes, but there is no other indication that a search is in progress. The screen flashes repeatedly, creating multiple opportunities for a miss-click. Miss-clicks can cause the search to crash, requiring the user to start over.
4. When searching for a provider, the drop down that allows you to select between Hospital or Provider Name is not enabled until after the user enters a zip code. This is confusing, especially since the drop down field does not appear to be disabled. The drop down should be greyed out when disabled, or should always be enabled.
5. I have been unable to proceed past the "Co-Insurance" screen. It does not appear to matter which radio button I select - "Yes, I would..." or "No, I would ..." In either case, clicking on "Continue" hangs, and does not appear to even issue a request to the server. The same is true for the "Exit and
6. There is a navigation pane for the Plan Helper on the left of the screen. Any attempt to use this pane appears to loose any work you've done so far.
Note: for next tests, I've gone back and created an account. My first attempt to create an account appear to fail, with no clear indication as to why. There is a link that says "Explain User Name Rules" in the mouse-over, but the link does not work. My second attempt reviled that the first attempt had actually succeeded.
7. The account creation asks for 3 security questions. I do not have standard answers to any of these questions -- they are nearly all questions that are likely to change over time (favorite animal, tv show, movie, food, etc.)
8. When logged in, the "Find a Provider" page contains a radio button for "Provider Type: Commercial", but does not include a radio button for type "Personal". There is also a check box that does not have any text next to it.
9. I can search for a provider, but then can not select anything.
10. There does not appear to be any way to add my family to my profile.
11. Contact link does not work, at least if I'm on the "My Account Overview" page.
12. In fact, none of the navigation links at the bottom of the page work (Home, Get Started, Learn, About, Contact, etc.)
13. Oracle Access Error
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment