Colorado health insurance exchange releases metrics from opening week

KDVR,com ^ | October 14, 2013

[don-o]

DENVER — Despite some technical problems, thousands of Coloradans signed up for accounts with the new state health insurance marketplace website during its first week, according to metrics released Monday.

Connect for Health Colorado, the marketplace associated with the federal Affordable Care Act, saw 162,941 unique visitors during the period between Oct. 1 and Oct. 7, operators reported. Of those, 18,174 people created accounts.

But only 226 of them actually bought health care plans, covering 305 people in total.

[sitetest]

“Despite some technical problems,...”???

ROTFLMAO!!

That rates right up there with, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

[steve86]

Actually you can go directly to the insurance companies and purchase the same policies. You just would not be eligible for the subsidies on the front end.

In my state the exchange policies can not be purchased directly from the insurance companies. The insurance cos do list both the exchange and non-exchange policies on their websites, but it says in bold letters "CAN ONLY BE PURCHASED THROUGH WASHINGTON STATE HEALTH EXCHANGE next to the exchange policies.

The non-exchange policies are similar but not identical (deductibles, OoP, etc.)

[Red in Blue PA]

226 in CO, 50 in WI, 5 in KS, and ZERO in IA.

Now that’s a success!/s

[Oldeconomybuyer]

<<. But only 226 of them actually bought health care plans. >>

Payments are Dec 15th. Those are the actual “sales”.

[nascarnation]

Good point.

I wonder if among the 15,000 new IRS attorneys and accountants for Obamacare, they have “repo guys”.

“You didn’t pay for that gall bladder removal, we’re putting it back in...”

[catnipman]

Uh, 305 people in one week in not even close to thousands, Patty. Still, with 20 weeks left for enrollment (assuming that blistering pace doesn’t fall off), 6,000 more people can enroll. And all for only $21,000,000 in advertising. Still, that IS thousands. But does that mean 600,000 additional people will have created accounts but DIDN’T enroll as well? And how many of the 6,000 are getting “free” taxpayer funded insurance and how many of those 6,000 are healthy?

And what about the hundreds of thousands who will lose their insurance because it is now illegal, or the hundreds of thousands who will lose their doctors, or the hundreds of thousands who will be cut back to 29 hour weeks, or the hundreds of thousands who will have their premiums double or triplet? Is that a fair trade for 6,000 people to get free insurance? I guess it probably is if you’re a Democrat.

[FlingWingFlyer]

You can bet that those 226 all got taxpayer subsidies to pay the entire premium for the plans they “purchased”.

[PJ-Comix]

How many of the people who created accounts will have their IDs stolen from them? Giving personal info to an ObamaCare website makes about as much sense as giving a Nigerian emailer your bank account info.

[nascarnation]

What income level gets you to that point?

I thought there was a minimum payment of 4% of income.

[lilypad]

I live in Florida and have bcbs. I logged onto my account and as expected I am losing my current coverage which is 422 a month.So I did some shopping on their website. I am not getting a subsidy. I found a plan I thought was pretty close to what I have but on bcbs site it says it will be about 300 dollars more a month from what I am currently paying, that is around 725.00 a month. Sometime later I went on to the healthcare.gov site and found that same plan without subsidy is about what I am paying for my present policy, it is 437 a month. So I called bcbs directly and asked if I can sign up without using the govt site and he said yes. He proceeded to quote me the price of 725 a month and I asked why I am not getting the same price I saw on the govt site, he said they should be the same. He had to put me on hold twice for long times why they tried to figure it out. He told me he would have to call me back because no one could answer that question, and he thanked me for bringing it to their attention. We both agreed they need to delay this mess because everyone is confused and have no answers.

[steve86]

OK, thanks for the info, good luck.

[matt1234]

No wonder obama looks likes he’s about to lose his mind.