Covered California Facing Huge Computer Glitches

Obamacare chickens are now coming home to roost

Kemberlee just reported that country's largest health insurer will stop participating ^[1] in some Obamacare markets and that 12 of 23 state exchanges have closed.

Covered California, touted as the most successful state exchange, is now experiencing a significant technical glitch that is jeopardizing the health of pregnant women and their unborn children.

Due to a computer error, pregnant women are dropped from their Covered California coverage when they report their condition, and are transferred automatically to Medi-Cal (which is not taken by many doctors).
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Inez Whitlow uses a ranch in Elk Grove as her office for an organization she started in 1998 helping pregnant women and teens in crisis. She says a recent problem with Covered California is making it difficult for her clients when it comes to their medical care.

"I just got off the phone call with one of my girls and she said, 'Hey they won't see me at the doctor anymore,'" she said.

…Whitlow says it's happened to a number of her clients in the past few months.

"What then we find is these girls decide not to go to a doctor," she said. "So now we have them not going to prenatal care."

But that is not the only technical problem associated with the Golden State's Obamacare exchange. Federal investigators found significant cybersecurity weaknesses ^[3] in the health insurance websites of California and two other state exchanges that could enable hackers to get their hands on the personal information about hundreds of thousands of people.

…[A] spokesman for the state's exchange, Roy Kennedy, would not say how Covered California was addressing the problems, citing security concerns. He pointed instead to a letter sent in October to members of Congress.

Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said there have been no successful breaches of website security. However, he said personal information may have been exposed in a few instances because of human error or other mistakes.

…Since the GAO audit, Lee's letter said, Covered California conducts more frequent scans to identify threats, and any critical findings will be immediately fixed.

But beyond the computer issues, there is even more trouble ahead. California's insurance exchange is threatening to cut hospitals from its networks for poor performance or high costs ^[4].

…The California Hospital Association said the exchange is moving too fast and acting too much like a regulator.

"The devil is in the details, and the rapidity of this concerns us," said Dr. David Perrott, chief medical officer at the state hospital trade group.

"We understand value-based purchasing is here in some form and we do not oppose that. But Covered California is charging ahead with this assessment and trying to figure out the answers when it hasn't been worked out."

California physicians warn that the exchange's proposal could further reduce networks that already are too thin for patients.

All of these issues were predicted by Tea Party groups during our 2009 protests attempting to stop passage of Obamacare.

Now, the Obamacare chickens are beginning to come home to roost…and they they just laid a big egg on Covered California.