They better get more tissues from Costco to be ready for the butt-kicking their entire scheme is going to get in November.
Facing 50,000-application backlog, insurance marketplace chief breaks down in tears
The head of the state’s beleaguered health insurance marketplace, which was once a national model, broke down in tears Thursday, as she described how demoralizing it has been for her staff to struggle with a broken website that has left an unknown number of people without coverage.
Jean Yang, the executive director of the Massachusetts Health Connector, wept at a board meeting, where it was disclosed that 50,000 applications for health insurance are sitting in a pile, and have yet to be entered into a computer system.
Each one of those applications requires two hours to process, adding to a mountain of work facing Connector staff as they scramble to prevent people from losing insurance, officials said.
“These people came here to lead and innovate, and instead they’re doing manual workarounds, and they are embarrassed to tell friends and family that they work for the Health Connector,” Yang said at the board meeting.
Yang made clear she was not looking for sympathy.
“We have to work harder,” she said. “That means I need tell the staff members they’re not doing a good enough job and I’m telling them that, even though they have been doing this tirelessly for months, and they’re exhausted.”
The state’s health insurance website was working smoothly until October, when it was revamped to comply with the more complicated requirements of the federal health care law. Since then, it has been bedeviled by error messages and is often very sluggish or crashes entirely, officials said. That prompted the state to resort to old-fashioned paper applications, and to put many people in to temporary health plans. But an unknown number of others may be ununinsured because of the paperwork backlog.
Cry me a river! Did someone change her pamper yet? Yang sounds like a Hillary supporter who stole a page from her playbook. Yeah, crying…that’s real leadership. People are embarrassed to tell family and friends who they work for? They’re exhausted? Boo hoo hoo. In the words of Billy Ray Cyrus, “here’s a quarter, call someone who cares!”
Just hang in there Jean. Soon, you won’t have a job to cry about, or pampers to soil.
The new req’ts/signup went into effect in Oct. Why didn’t Mass. know that its system for signups wouldn’t work before then? Did it rely on federal assurances that everything was fine on its end? You shouldn’t wait until system goes live to find out it doesn’t work. Mass. needed to build in full testing including interface with feds. If it couldn’t because of feds, then Mass. needed to say, we can’t do this on this schedule before switching. Problem 1a: politicians and political appointees today, believe completely in pushing problems back/don’t address them now if you would get an answer that will tick off the ‘Big Boss’. But this involved people’s every day life and that couldn’t be pushed into the future. Problem 1b: they’ve never run a business. Crying: result of everyone gets a prize. Bet that bonuses in that dept. won’t be affected.
As we know, most of these people will never learn. Never. So what more can we say to this than “Keep the faith”?
It’s like that PSA I sometimes hear on “buzzed” driving. Two girls in a car get into an accident. The passenger’s arm is “bent out of shape.” The driver says, “Oh my god. I only had a few drinks!” Then they enter an alternate reality. The injured girl says, “Really? In that case my arm’s fine.” The driver acts unsure. “Really? You’re okay?” The passenger says, “No, genius!” (crunch–the spell breaks) “OW! MY ARM!”
The fact that this lady and her staff are “trying so hard” is immaterial. It means nothing to the wife whose husband has cancer, or the mother whose child has a chronic medical condition, but they lost their coverage due to this screwed up system. It’s not made “okay” by the promoters’ sacrifice and victimhood. “Oops! Our web site broke” is not cute, nor is it an excuse when they’ve supported a plan that makes it the way that people are supposed to sign up for what they need. “I only imposed a thousand regulations” does not absolve them. It makes them responsible for the suffering of these people. ALL OF IT!
I do wish that conservatives had a list of names of every individual who was involved in the promotion and crafting of this law, so that it could be plastered on the web, and a sublist could be given out on the TV networks; so that the public could know who has put them into this situation. A public shaming is in order. If they relent and want to reverse this, they could appeal for our forgiveness, as Americans are generous enough to do for even the worst among us. Until then we need to make it clear that this abomination needs to be stopped NOW, and we NEVER want to see the likes of it again!
Speaking of socialists and takeovers, Hugo Chavez died a year ago, but his daughters refuse to leave the Presidential Palace. Fast food restaurants and caterers are refusing to deliver to them, because they don’t pay the bills. Pres. Maduro is residing in the villa for the Vice-President. http://www.vocativ.com/money/the1/venezuelan-princess/?utm_campaign=feb13&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=outbrain