Our ACA saga - next installment.....on identification verification, the chat function, and phone [View all]

[NRaleighLiberal]

About a month ago I wrote a post starting the story of helping our daughter sign up for health insurance - we are in NC, and as an opt-out state, wondered how this would end up for her; she works nearly full time, but nearly isn't close enough - her employer (grocery store) is dropping her health insurance.

Anyway - we went on to the website, started the application, and all was going well until it came time for her to verify her identity. She got a set of three questions, the third of which must have been part of her former boyfriend's credit report (they lived together for awhile, and it is surprising that questions that my daughter can't answer showed up as options!). So she failed the 3rd question, got another set of 3, and again - couldn't answer the 3rd because she had no knowledge (asked about a credit card that she wasn't aware of).

So we ended up on the line with a very pleasant and patient ACA rep, ended up calling Experion, ended up in a 3 way call - the upshot is that my daughter had to mail two pieces of ID (copy of her SS card and drivers license) to an address for the Marketplace in kentucky - they said it would be cleared up in 1-2 weeks.

So, one month later, I went in to the system and tried to help her through the process. Once again we ended up with a message that we can't continue due to lack of verification of her identity. So once again I ended up on the phone with a very pleasant and patient rep - and this time we were told the issue is being elevated to the Advanced Issues team - but we had to wait a week for them to call us back (that's the protocol) - if they don't, we call again and they can bump us up by phone to the Advanced Issue Resolution team.

My feelings so far - the chat function is pretty useless because you can't share any specific info - it is just for quick, high level questions I think; the phone function is great based on the fact that both reps we had in our two calls were great to work with (albeit unable to solve our problem). I am frustrated by the source of the identity/security questions, but that is more of a problem with the credit rating bureaus.....

So I am not ready to complain, throw up my hands, rant, etc. It is what it is - in my corporate life I saw the implementation of many different IT systems, and all of them - from simple to complex - had many issues that took a long time to work through. And this particular system feeds, and is being fed by, many other info systems some of which may themselves not be very slick.

That's where things are.....(and reading back on this, I start too many sentences with "so"!)