Board strife as Colorado exchange far behind projected enrollment – The Denver Post.

Enrollment in the Affordable Care Act through Colorado’s health insurance exchange is barely half the state’s worst-case projection, prompting demands from exchange board members for better stewardship of public money.

FYI we’re talking 6,001 enrollments vs a worst case projection of 11,108.

The coup de grace are the closing paragraphs…

The exchange and Medicaid have made some good progress, said board member Steve ErkenBrack, who is head of Rocky Mountain Health Plans in Grand Junction. But, he said, he knows there are many who desperately need to get through to a new policy by Dec. 15.

“This is not a theory for people, this is about real people with real problems, and we need to make sure that transition is as smooth as possible,” he said.

Well of course Steve ErkenBrack, President & CEO of Rocky Mountain Health Plans knows plenty of people who are desperately looking for a plan. Why? BECAUSE he cancelled all Rocky Mountain individual plans issued after March 23rd, 2010. Yes, Steve ErkenBrack is responsible for throwing a large majority of Rocky Mountain Health Plans individual clients to the Obamacare wolves. His other partner in crime is Kaiser which cancelled at least some of their individual plans.

What were the other Colorado individual insurers doing? Anthem BCBS, Assurant Health, Cigna, Humana and United HealthOne were figuring out ways for their clients to stay on their current plans through 2014.

What insurance companies on the Colorado Exchange have 5 stars? You guessed it, Rocky Mountain and Kaiser.

Not total baloney but close to it. She did NOT purchase – Colorado health exchange website: easy as pie.

I recently created an account on Colorado’s health care exchange and checked the available offerings for medical insurance. I did it because my husband is turning 65, so he is going to be getting Medicare. I am a few years younger, and I have been offered medical insurance by his former employer at a slightly subsidized rate, and I wanted to know if I could get better or cheaper care through the exchange.

The entire process of creating an account, inputting all my personal info, and checking the available policies (in my case about 25) took less than a half-hour. No computer glitches whatsoever. I did not end up buying any policies, because the slightly subsidized one is $10/ month cheaper than the cheapest on the exchange.

First of all, the Connect for Health Colorado website works decently, althought it’s a bit clunky. Katherine however, did the easy part. Here’s what she missed:

1. SHE DID NOT APPLY. If she had…
2. The first step would have been a trip to the Colorado Peak website to apply for Medicaid.  Her decline could be immediate, take 2 – 3 days or as long as 45 day. Based on her letter, she would be declined and would receive her “1Bxxx” decline number. Until she recieved her Medicaid decline number she would not be able to do anything on the Connect for Health Colorado website.
3. NEXT she would do have to put in detailed information about all family members in her household and income information. She would also be warned that the automatic income verification system is not presently working and she may have to supply documentation at a future date. Once she is finshed with that, she would receive an official notification of her subsidy and the amount she would receive. If she had tried to do this 3 weeks ago, she would have had to call in and do the financial verification with a Connect for Health Colorado employee as the website was not able to determine the official subsidy.
4. NOW she can officially shop.

Also, these steps take a substantial amount of time. The Medicaid application can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. The subsidy determination can take from 10 – 30 minutes.

The bottom line is Katherine did the easy part and has no idea what lies ahead if she actually decided to apply.