WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — The website the Obama administration rolled out is not only facing technical glitches, but a serious pricing problem as well.
CBS News reports that the new “shop and browse” feature on HealthCare.gov is underestimating the cost of health insurance – in fact, customers could wind up paying double.
“It’s incredibly misleading for people that are trying to get a sense of what they’re paying,” industry analyst Jonathan Wu told CBS News.
CBS News found the Obamacare website would charge a 48-year-old Charlotte, N.C. resident who is ineligible for subsidies $231 a month. The actual plan on the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina’s website though costs $360.
It gets worse as the age of the patient in question increases. HealthCare.gov prices a 62-year-old Charlotte resident at $394 for a basic plan when it would actually cost $634.
“It’s important that the users have a proper, trustworthy, honest brand experience when they interact with HealthCare.gov, and I think providing accurate prices is an integral component of that,” Chini Krishnan, CEO of GetInsured.com, told CBS News.
Faced with mounting questions about the website, the Obama administration announced Tuesday that Jeffrey Zients, the longtime management consultant, will help fix the problems and turn the site into the breezy, one-stop shopping portal President Barack Obama promised it would be.
Zients came out of a temporary retirement from the federal government and quietly dived into his new assignment on Monday. He left the administration earlier this year after the budget director’s job went to someone else. Last month, Obama announced that Zients would take over next year as director of the National Economic Council, becoming the president’s chief economic adviser.
Zients will provide short-term advice, assessments and recommendations to a Department of Health and Human Services team that officials say has been working around the clock to fix http://www.healthcare.gov since it went live Oct. 1. Administration officials, from Obama on down, had promoted the federal website as the first stop for uninsured people in 36 states who want to figure out what coverage they can afford. They are now urging people to also try signing up by telephone, mail or in person.
Aneesh Chopra, who was Obama’s chief technology officer, said Zients is extremely skilled in figuring things out from a management perspective.