The Trump administration plans to shut down the federal health
insurance exchange for 12 hours during all but one Sunday in the
upcoming open enrollment season.
The shutdown will occur from 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET on every Sunday except Dec. 10.
The Department of Health and Human Services will also shut down the federal exchange -- healthcare.gov
-- overnight on the first day of open enrollment, Nov. 1. More than
three dozen states use that exchange for their marketplaces.
HHS officials disclosed this information Friday during a webinar with community groups that help people enroll.
The Trump administration has come under attack from critics who say
that it is intentionally undermining the Affordable Care Act, through
regulatory actions. It shortened the enrollment period, withdrew money for advertising and cut the budget for navigator groups, which help people shop for plans.
And now HHS is closing the site for a substantial portion of each
weekend -- for maintenance, officials said. That is the same time that
many working patients -- the prime target group for ACA insurance --
could be shopping for their insurance, critics noted.
"The Department of Health & Human Services is actively trying to
prevent people from signing up for healthcare coverage," Rep. Don Beyer
(D-Va.) tweeted. "This is outrageous."
"Argh" was the reaction of Shelli Quenga, program director at the
Palmetto Project in South Carolina, a nonprofit group that received
about $1 million to help with outreach and enrollment in the past 12
months. This month, HHS cut her budget in half for this year's open
enrollment.
Open enrollment season will run from Nov. 1 to Dec. 15, less than
half the time people have had to sign up during the first four years of
the exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act.
More than 12 million people enrolled on the state and federal
marketplaces for 2017 coverage, including more than 9 million on the
federal exchange. Some customers give up coverage over the course of the
year.
Advocates were already nervous that fewer people would sign up during the shortened period this time around.
"I could see this really impacting the ability of people to complete
an application sign-up in a single sitting, which is so important," said
Jason Stevenson, spokesman for the Utah Health Policy Project, an
Obamacare navigator group. He noted that 10 p.m. Mountain Time is often a
relatively popular time for people to enroll online.
"Health insurance is complicated, and in the past couple of years we
had an administration that made it easier to sign up, but that has
really changed in the past six months, with more hurdles not only for
consumers but for those whose job it is to help them," he said.
A spokesman for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services, which oversees the exchanges, said the shutdowns should not
cause too many problems.
"Maintenance outages are regularly scheduled on healthcare.gov every
year during open enrollment. This year is no different," said the
official, speaking on background and requesting anonymity. "The
maintenance schedule was provided in advance this year in order to
accommodate requests from certified application assisters. System
downtime is planned for the lowest-traffic time periods on
healthcare.gov, including Sunday evenings and overnight."
Former Obama administration officials say the planned shutdowns of
healthcare.gov goes far beyond what has happened before. Typically, the
online enrollment system was offline for only a few hours at a time and
such interruptions were much less frequent than once a week.
A federal report to Congress said healthcare.gov was online 99.9 percent of the time in the 2015 and 2016 open enrollment seasons.
The Trump administration plan will have the site operating 93 percent
of the time -- over an enrollment period that is half as long as it
used to be. In effect, instead of a 90-day enrollment season, the Trump
administration has cut it to 45. The maintenance shutdowns cut it to an
equivalent of 42 days.
"There is just a really big question as to why this is happening,"
said Lori Lodes, former CMS communications director. "Have they done a
comprehensive review of the tech and believe this is what is actually
necessary? If so, then why don't they have confidence in the system."
"We've never only had six weeks to do this with no outreach help from
the feds," said Quenga from South Carolina. "Every minute is valuable."
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