To help people sign up for health care under the Affordable Care Act a mobile tour was arranged for the Olympia Farmers Market on Sunday. There was a major glitch as - The Washington HealthPlanner website was down from Sunday morning. There was a long trailer equipped with 20 laptop computers but no one could enroll.
"Washington Healthplanfinder is temporarily unavailable due to an outage of the Federal Data Hub, which allows Washington Healthplanfinder to verify eligibility for free or low-cost health insurance," The website was down when last checked at 10 p.m. Bethany Frey, spokeswoman for Washington Health Benefit Exchange � the Olympia-based agency that teamed up with Washington Healthplanfinder to sponsor the statewide mobile tour � said it was frustrating for the site to go down during the day of an event.
Around 50 people came to get information and to make appointments to start the application process. The federal government website has had glitches since its launch on 1st October; the Health Benefit Exchange staff found that the program was faulty.
Majority of the people of Washington are covered under the employer health insurance plan and approximately 1 million people are uninsured. Those earning less than $94,000 a year for a family of 4 are eligible for tax credits or financial help. There are 46 plans offered by eight health insurance carriers. 35,000 have already enrolled and 70,000 need to complete their application process. The mobile tour took off from Spokane on 16th October and is set to finish on November 12th in Seattle at the University of Washington.
References:
Hannah Punitha (IRDA Licence Number: 2710062)
Rolf Boone, Oct 2013
Source-Medindia
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