Health Sherpa 2016 Open Enrollment

[mwoodbrid]

You get the feeling that HealthSherpa hired recent college-graduates to "improve" healthsherpa.com for 2016. They knew how to emulate the needless screens and the material design that ehealthinsurance and gohealth use, but had no idea about... HEALTH INSURANCE, and the experience that's most pleasing to health insurance shoppers.

Plus, it looks like they didn't read the communications from CMS, stating that the Medical Provider Lookup tool wouldn't be functional for awhile. Lots of data was still missing and insurance companies reported many errors while testing the CMS platform for accuracy, during quality control runs.

They definitely took on a couple of major projects at one time, between the "improved consumer experience" system and integrating with a carrier as it's system for on-exchange enrollments.

 

[Evan]

First client came back this morning with a 12/1 effective date... WTF...How did you guys manage to f up a perfectly good system.

 

[Ann H]

What a great lesson for us all.

1. Clients want you to take a complex problem and just make it simple, accurate, and FINISHED.

2. Don't mess up a perfectly good system.

3. Quality upgrades are great, so long as they don't violate rules # 1 & 2 above.

 

[russelltw]

two apps submitted so far with HS have both come back with "adjustments" to the subsidies.

 

[SamIam]

Every scenerio I've put in matches up healthcare.gov

 

[russelltw]

Have you enrolled anyone and received the same subsidy. It matches up until after it was submitted, then it has a subsidy that is much lower.

Just noticed that when I quoted 2016 rates and submitted app, HS returns a 12/1/15 effective. Confirmed on 3 apps so far.

 

[AllenChicago]

Subsidy amounts are coming back changed from initial enrollment offers, and are being given 12/1/2015 effective dates. Looks like Health Sherpa is quoting 2016, but it's telling HC.gov that the applicant wants a December 1, 2015 SEP, which changes subsidy, premium, etc..

Granted, this is Health Sherpa's first experience with running 2015 Special Enrollments concurrently with 2016 Open Enrollments, but can it be that hard to do?

 

[G.Gordon]

First HS enrollment this morning. Currently on-exchange via a Wallmart agent last year. Pretty sure he has an account, couldn't remember any information. Went HS to save time. Still not showing eligibility report, this was my 8am appointment.

 

[AllenChicago]

HealthSherpa went down for a time. Couldn't log in. Is now back up. Those incorrect 12/1/2015 effective dates are now changed to 1/1/2016.

Apps are still in "pending" status. I'm done with HealthSherpa for today. The government implemented an unexpected software change this morning and is still working with the WBEs and carriers to get everything fixed.

 

[TN_agent]

g. Gordon that is what has me really hesitant to use HS, despite having signed up. I just have no idea what is going to happen to people who are currently on-ex NOT through HS (whether we went carrier direct, I talked them through their own hc.gov account, or we called on the phone).

No one has been able to give me an answer, and your experience has me worried.

In a perfect world, it would pull up last year's app pre-populated and then submit it, also cancel 2015 coverage 12-31-15 without them having to call. I am concerned going through HS this year is going to cause problems if you didn't go through them last year. Multiple apps, etc (I have heard some talk on here of a new application number being generated by the marketplace for 2016 renewals but have not seen anyone's actual HC.gov account yet to verify this-can anyone confirm/deny?).