CMS Friday Document Dump: Obamacare Enrollment Error Rate on Healthcare.gov … One in Four, 25%

CLUSTERF*CK: The error rate for those enrolling in Obamacare on Healthcare.fail was so bad that CMS was forced to make the info public, of course in a Friday afternoon document dump of course.

Get a load of this America, after the Obama administration who promised us the most transparent presidency ever, refusing for weeks to tell us just how bad the extent of the back end problems of the Obamacare website truly were, provided on Friday afternoon  that 25% of Obamacare enrollments in October and November have been affected. This means that one in four of those that think they have enrolled in a plan, may have no insurance coverage on January 1, 2014. What a joke, these screw-ups actually want the people to think the new normal is a 10% error rate, as if that is a good thing?

Those technical bugs, separate from the troubles consumers had experienced accessing information on the website during the first two months, are posing a significant new problem for those who signed up and are expecting insurance coverage come Jan. 1.

One in four of those applications either did not get transferred to insurers, were transferred in duplicate form, or had major errors in information shared.

Insurers are supposed to receive the 834 Forms from healthcare.gov. The forms, meant to be read by computers, provide insurers with information on enrollees and what plan they have chosen. Without the information, insurers have no way of knowing who has signed up on the Obamacare exchanges and what coverage they need.

A spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Friday suggested that the only way those who enrolled in October and November can be sure they will be covered in January is by paying their insurance bill and contacting their insurer to confirm their standing.

“I would certainly encourage any consumer that has a question of their insurance choice to contact the insurance company of their choice to get additional information,” CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille told reporters Friday.

Oh, but do not fret, the gang that could not shoot straight have fixed the problems. How do we know that? Because our truthful president Barack Obama told us. This is the governments version of fixing the problem, now only 10% of enrollments are being affected, 10%!!! Not knowing who the 25% or 10% are, this would mean that ever individual who enrolled would have to call and make sure that they had been properly enrolled. This would completely overwhelm a customer service call center as none are set up for this type of volume.

Bataille said CMS, along with the outside firm QSSI, is working furiously to fix the back-end problems, and has succeeded in reducing the number of erroneous 834 Form communications to insurers to 10 percent of all applications.

That error rate could still be affecting a significant amount of applications, especially considering that healthcare.gov is operating much more smoothly this week and has seen its traffic spike.

The PJ Tatler discusses the Obamacare enrollment rate as being unacceptable and are 100% correct. Folks, I do this stuff for a living and deal with similar projects,  insurance data and metrics. And I will go one better, not only is 25%, 10% or 1% not acceptable in private sector, it is also not with many government contracts. I have dealt with with many government metrics that were 100% and 99.5%. If I had ever developed a process that in turn did nothing but created 25% or 10% more rework, I would have been sent packing immediately.

A 25% error rate in processing transactions is completely unacceptable. Hell, a 1% error rate would not be tolerated at any private sector firm, claims of “private sector velocity” to the contrary notwithstanding.