ObamaCare- D.C. Exchange Website Misled Customers About Individual Mandate

The Federalist: Last year, in response to Congress repealing the Obamacare individual mandate penalty beginning this January, the D.C. Council established its own requirement for District residents to maintain health coverage. If D.C. leaders wished to replicate Obamacare on the local level, they have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations—right down to the non-functioning website.

For nearly six months—including the first month of open enrollment—the District failed to inform visitors to its online insurance exchange about the new coverage requirement. When District officials finally discovered their webpage fail, what did they do to admit their fault, and tell the public? Nothing.

When Congress took steps to try and defund the D.C. insurance mandate last summer, District officials complained, calling it an intrusion on their authority. But after having bungled their website and failed to tell the public about the mix-up, how can they now claim competence to manage their own affairs?

The Webpage Fail, Explained

At the start of the open enrollment period in early November, I went to the District’s health insurance exchange website, D.C. Health Link, to evaluate my coverage options for 2019. While there, I found an intriguing—and misleading—webpage. When discussing whether individuals should purchase coverage, the webpage noted that “federal law requires most Americans to have a minimum level of health coverage,” a requirement that was “still in effect for the 2017 and 2018 tax years.”

By stating that the requirement remained in effect for 2017 and 2018, the webpage implied that the mandate will disappear in 2019. But while the federal penalty disappeared on January 1, the District’s own insurance mandate replaced the federal requirement on that date. However, the webpage I saw did not mention the D.C. mandate at all.

It looks like no one updated the page prior to open enrollment to reflect the District’s new coverage requirement. D.C. Health Link officials had almost six months between the June passage of the District’s mandate and the start of open enrollment in November to change the webpage’s content. Yet despite having a budget of more than $30 million, including an annual IT budget of more than $11 million, and more than 100 employees, no one attended to this basic task.

MORE HERE