As everyone knows, the Affordable Care Act’s roll out of the state and federal exchange websites on October 1st 2013 has been plagued with defects, preventing people from enrolling in coverage. In fact it is so bad, it’s gotten to the point where congress is now considering delaying the individual mandate by one year. After all, it’s not fair to fine/tax someone for not having health insurance that is unable to enroll in coverage right? However, even if the individual mandate is delayed by a year, this will not solve the problem of people being cancelled from their current insurance policies with no replacement policy being available to them.
A good example of this is the Healthy NY program in New York State. All individuals currently enrolled in the state-subsidized Healthy NY insurance program will have their plans cancel on 1/1/14. Since this program is being completely discontinued for individuals, there will be no replacement plan offered, forcing the about-to-become uninsured to enroll in the individual exchange market. Thus, if the NY State of Health website is not fixed long before the 12/15/13 application cutoff date, what’s going to happen to the tens of thousands of Healthy NY individual policyholders? Will Healthy NY extend the coverage period beyond 1/1/14?
In an effort to report this alarming issue, several calls were placed by the office to the NY State of Health call center, Healthy NY, the NYS Department of Financial Services, and the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Each department pushed us further down the chain, ultimately leading to a voice mail being left with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid’s NY regional office.
Should we make any progress on our end, we will update our readers accordingly. For now, the uninsured countdown timer continues for HealthyNY customers.