ACA Express -vs- HealthSherpa

[AllenChicago]

Had real problems with ACA express this year. 40 of my enrollments through them came over to UHC as orphaned - no agent information. I now have to claim the deals by an AOR for for each one. Not what I want to spend my time on. Significant amount of commissions in question

I had many other problems but having to claim the deals is the capper. I'm pretty sure that it was them because I only used ACA exp for UHC enrollments and 1/3 went properly to UHC and the other 2/3 I have to claim as my own now. I think it was early in the enrollment season when 2/3 of their enrollments were stuck in processing.
I just had 2 finish that were hung for 4 weeks and I had already enrolled them elsewhere. I hope I don't have to go claim them now.

Anyone who used them better check that their enrollments are showing up.

I had a much better experience with free Sherpa until everyone got hung up on Tuesday.

I am reluctant to use ACA exp for anything now but emergency service. They aren't ready for prime time.

DJumterps, I see from reading your prior post here http://www.insurance-forums.net/for...a-express-enrollments-t78976.html#post1054788 that your problems with ACA Express enrollments started in November.

What Operating System and Browser did you use to submit your ACA Express enrollments?

 

[djumterps]

I think I usually used Mozilla. I know I am not the only agent in my group that lost the ownership of deals as we used aca exp. we are now going through the process of claiming them back.
as soon as i moved to another WBE, my problems were cleared as far as hanging apps and orphaned deals etc. i started calling UHC after 2 weeks about the missing deals but they said wait a little longer. i then sent the whole list of my enrollments and that's when they confirmed that many were under no agent ownership. all did get enrolled, thank god.

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oh and i use windows 10 on a HP laptop

 

[KennyWest]

I think I usually used Mozilla. I know I am not the only agent in my group that lost the ownership of deals as we used aca exp. we are now going through the process of claiming them back.
as soon as i moved to another WBE, my problems were cleared as far as hanging apps and orphaned deals etc. i started calling UHC after 2 weeks about the missing deals but they said wait a little longer. i then sent the whole list of my enrollments and that's when they confirmed that many were under no agent ownership. all did get enrolled, thank god.

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oh and i use windows 10 on a HP laptop

Again, you are confusing Authorized User with your NPN being attached. For example, I spoke to an agent on Friday who had submitted 150 through BCBS Texas, of them 145 were showing in his BOB (Book Of Business) and when he called BCBS about the others they said they were there though not yet fully integrated so they would show in his BOB.

The point being; all apps are submitted to CMS the EXACT same way regardless of the carrier, and CMS will not even accept an app from a WBE unless the fields for FFM ID, Agent First Name, Agent Last Name and NPN are included in the feed we send. Additionally some carriers take longer to show enrollments in an agents BOB than others. Last year Blue Cross took forever it seemed and Humana and Molina were slow. This year Blue Cross (at least in HCSC states) is fast and Molina is taking forever.

Lastly, the web browser would not matter at all as far as this discussion is concerned.

 

[djumterps]

i wish you would stop telling me what my experience is. I have done over 800 enrollments now in my day so it's not my first rodeo.

i know what i am talking about and what problems that i am experiencing. and have spent two weekends cleaning up the mess from using aca exp this season.

so please stop trying to educate me on what my problem is to absolve aca exp from any responsibility. it's like there is a gnat in the room.

i thought this was an agent forum and not a vendor blog.

 

[AllenChicago]

Lastly, the web browser would not matter at all as far as this discussion is concerned.

I was thinking that he might have bumped into the Windows-10 incompatibility issues related to form fields. OK, so the O.S. & Browser are not related to DJumterps issues. Understood.

 

[russelltw]

djumterps,
Sorry to hear about your issues. I can say from my experience in NC is that neither ACAx or HS have lost apps for me. Used HS starting last AEP and this one, but switched to ACAx this week because of the issues HS was having. I like each system for specific reason, but have to use the one that is working the best right now, which is ACAx.

Now the SHOP on the other hand has been a nightmare for getting agent info to cross to the carrier. SHOP says it was sent, carrier said it was not. Have requested SHOP resubmit the AOR multiple times. It took 6 months to get the agent paid.

Good luck to you on getting the business corrected.

 

[djumterps]

We had at least one other agent w same issues. We may have more. Going to avoid h.gov and hopefully uhc will take the aor forms.
They said they would.

 

[kvnchris]

Just to touch base on the agent attachment, mine has worked nearly flawlessly. Same goes for my 2 business partners. 90% of our BCBS in TX has been attached, and the rest should pop up in the next couple weeks (per BCBS broker line).

On another subject, I'd like to thank Kenny@acaexpress for his hard work and clear answers here. When I posted about the mobile site not working a few weeks ago, it was fixed within a week. Now I have clients signing up on my portal with their iPhones. It's a little bit slow sometimes on loading the pages, it'd be nice if it got a little more optimization but I'm SO thankful that it works. I really look forward to the future of this tool and pray to god that agent commissions don't disappear completely!

 

[djumterps]

I would hands down choose Sherpa over aca exp except their pricing model.
I had no problems enrolling couples with them whereas I had to reenroll half of my couples on aca exp on another wbe.
Both do not handle kids under 19 but Sherpa does attempt with the medicaid question.
The few deals that hung on Sherpa were fixed by the kill switch next to it. A big deal when I enroll with other methods and don't want an overwrite of my enrollment.
70% of my aca exp hung and for almost a week.
I guess I'm the only one that felt the pain or honest about it.
Won't pay the money for Sherpa until a subscription pricing model

 

[TechBroker]

Although we have been using Sherpa, we WILL find a better option next year. in a long career, Sherpa has proven to be the least responsive, poorest communicating organization I have ever seen. When GoHealth sent out a notice the friday after thanksgiving regarding the double-redirect debacle, sherpa was silent for 5 more days, and they provided incredibly poor details on the process change.

Their support time response is measured in 3-4 day lags. The one-on-one responses have ranged from absolutely useless to absolutely essential for operation - things that every user should have known through an email or online distribution.

The input forms change without any notice. There was no notification of how they were going to handle the backlog of incomplete submissions on the 15th - we simply had to wait to see if they would get processed. Imagine seeing hundreds of applications stagnant with no word on their plans.

The concept of keeping customers informed about status it totally lost. Depending upon this organization to be a conduit for all of the revenue from our business has brought far too many sleepless nights.

Sorry for the rant. Unfortunately ACA is not an option for us.