CoveredCa.com’s Bogus Numbers and Flimflam Job

CoveredCa.com’s Bogus Numbers and Flimflam Job

 by Hugh Hewitt

 

The executive director of CoveredCA.com declined to appear on Wednesday’s radio show, but found time to spread more misinformation about the Obamacare subsidiary in the Golden State. From Bakersfield CA Channel 9′s report:

Peter Lee, Executive Director of Covered California, spoke at Clinica Sierra Vista Wednesday afternoon.

The East Bakersfield clinic has had 46 people become certified enrollment counselors to help people through the enrollment process.

Lee said Covered California had over 177,000 people complete applications for healthcare in October.

According to Covered California almost 60,000 enrollment applications were started from November 9 through November 16.

Peter Lee also said the Covered California website has been much more successful than the much maligned healthcare.gov site.

“Our website is working just fine,” said Lee, “Actually 70% of people that go through the enrollment process online said it was easy.”

Note that Lee does not distinguish between Medicaid applicants and non-Medicaid applicants, either for the October or the partial November numbers. Note the “were started” language for the November application number.
The better numbers would be for actual paid customers of the new plans. Who, if anyone, has made a payment to their new health plan? Who, at least, has gotten a real bill?
Compare Mr. Lee’s puff talk with this article from January ion the Sacramento Business Journal which states 4.7 million California’s may be served by CoveredCA.com eventually, but without a timetable.
As for the “working fine” declaration, well, read this post.
Ask yourself what the month-by-month enrollment in non-Medicaid policies must be to make the announced goals fro CoveredCA.com. Here’s what the comprehensive assessment of California’s hospitals concluded regarding the nuber of non-subsidized enrollees needed this year and beyond:

The long-term goal of Covered California’s marketing and outreach efforts is to provide coverage to 5.3 million of California’s residents. It will take many years to achieve this goal.

The goals for enrollment of individuals in subsidized coverage through the Covered California marketplace, or to purchase health coverage without subsidies in the individual market for the next few years, are as follows:

• 1.4 million by 2015
• 1.9 million by 2016
• 2.3 million by 2017

Now, with the paltry number already signed up (backed by an enormous expenditure in PR dollars), and against the backdrop of declining ad budgets and rising public suspicion of the security and efficacy of the website and especially the program and its staggering costs, who believes the nonsense peddled by Mr. Lee in Bakersfield today? Other than the Los Angeles Times, that is?
When does the MSM start asking Mr. Lee and his team hard questions? When does CoveredCA.com’s Board of Directors? Governor Brown? Anyone?
UPDATE: From the email inbox:

Hugh,

I am currently working to implement ACA for a major insurer in California. You have been talking about claiming that 50,000 enrollees is a win for Covered California even though the numbers fall far short of the estimates. It’s even worse than that. We have yet to fully process a clean file from the exchange. At the insurer level, this effectively means that we have enrolled and effectuated zero users as of today.
The process requires enrollees to make a payment to be truly “enrolled”. The state anounced in September that their payment processing would not be made available to enrolless until 2014 sometime. Covered CA was supposed to process a binder payment when users enrolled but they couldn’t get it to work. Without being able to process payments, nobody has bene fully effectuated – at least at my insurer.
Once we process files, we will notify enrollees that they must make a payment before they are enrolled. I have serious doubts that we will see high rates of payments which means that the current estimates of 50-60K enrollees will drop dramatically when people are asked to pay to finish their enrollment. We don’t even know who has enrolled for our plans yet.
It is truly a failure.
I’m sending from a personal e-mail account – please keep this anonymous as I need this job!
Thanks,

http://www.hughhewitt.com/coveredca-coms-bogus-numbers-flimflam-job/