Ten days before the (expected) close of open enrollment, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the federal exchange’s window-shopping tool – the one that the administration encourages everyone to check before applying for Marketplace insurance – was using the wrong year’s poverty-level guidelines. Neither the Obama administration nor any health-care consultants or policy experts that reporter Don Sapatkin could find had noticed it and the site was corrected within hours after the story was posted.
In theory, almost anyone going on the site got slightly incorrect information for 35 days. Most seriously affected, however, were people just above the poverty line in states that have not expanded Medicaid. When they put their information into the tool, it responded: “Not eligible for help paying for coverage.” Many of them may have given up right there and not submitted the actual applications (which were using the correct poverty stats and were assessed correctly). It’s impossible to tell from the notification letter whether errors were made.
