Cross-posted from the archived Media Trackers Ohio site.
In Ohio and the 26 other states that refused to create Obamacare exchanges, the “marketplaces” scheduled to begin taking registrants today will be entirely run by the federal government. What’s the worst that could happen?
“The Health Insurance Marketplace is Open,” announced a welcome message at HealthCare.gov. In Google Chrome version 29 on my Windows 7 desktop, I clicked the “APPLY NOW” button, selected Ohio from a dropdown list on the following page, and clicked “APPLY NOW” again.
After waiting for five minutes just to see the first form, I entered my name and address on the Step 1 page before clicking “NEXT.” Using a government service without waiting in line may have induced feelings of confusion and panic, so all was well up to this point.
At Step 2, I entered a username and an acceptably complex password before clicking “NEXT.”
And then everything came crashing down.
The Step 3 screen of the Obamacare exchange registration process involves three dropdown boxes for choosing account security questions. In Chrome on Windows, none of those boxes displayed any options, making it impossible to continue with registration.
No big deal — Chrome is only the world’s most prevalent web browser.
I clicked the “BACK” button on the Step 3 form and was returned to the Step 2 form, where I learned that web developers for the federal government are apparently not familiar with session variables that store form data as users click through multiple pages on the same site.
After reentering my username and password on the tabula rasa Step 2 form, I clicked “NEXT” again only to see the same Step 3 form with no options displayed in the mandatory Question 1, Question 2, and Question 3 dropdown boxes.
Time to start over in a new browser.
In Internet Explorer 10 on the same Windows 7 desktop, I opened a new tab for HealthCare.gov. After completing the same few initial clicks, I waited again for a minute or two before being directed to a login form instead of the blank Step 1 account creation page.
Doubting it would work, I entered the username and password I had selected moments earlier while trying to create an account in Chrome.
“The information you entered isn’t valid,” an error message on the login form explained. “Review this information. If you’re having trouble, call the Marketplace Call Center at 1-800-318-2596. TTY users should call 1-855-889-4325.”
I clicked the “CREATE ACCOUNT” button above the login form, which loaded the Step 1 account creation form. I filled out my name and email address again, entered the same username and password I had previously tried in Chrome on the Step 2 screen, and continued to Step 3.
As in the latest version of Google Chrome, the Step 3 screen displayed no options in the mandatory Question 1, Question 2, and Question 3 dropdown boxes in Internet Explorer 10.
This is just one of the HealthCare.gov technical problems users have already reported, although many state exchanges haven’t even gotten to the point of allowing users to fill out the account forms yet.
“This is bad, but also expected, given that it’s the very first day of the exchanges,” Arit John wrote at the leftist Atlantic Wire. “President Obama said we should all expect months of hiccups as the site’s kinks get worked out.”
Minor question: Should millions of Americans trust their insurance policies and medical information to a federal bureaucracy that can’t even prep three simple forms for launch after years of development time?