Government extends open enrollment for ACA health plans, but only for 36 hours (Dec 18, 3 AM ET)
Last edited Tue Dec 17, 2019, 04:38 AM - Edit history (4)
Source: NPR, CMS.GOV
Sunday was supposed to be the final deadline to enroll in health coverage for 2020 on Healthcare.gov, the federal marketplace for buying individual health insurance. But website glitches -- that may have caused enrollment problems -- prompted an outcry, and the government restarted enrollment Monday.
The new deadline is Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 3 a.m. ET. Consumers who already have an account can shop for plans and find out if they qualify for subsidies to lower the costs of plans at Healthcare.gov. (Twelve states and D.C. have their own health insurance exchanges -- and their enrollment deadlines vary.)
The person who appears to have flagged the technical issue first was Joshua Peck. He worked on Healthcare.gov outreach at the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services under President Obama. In 2017, when the Trump Administration slashed the outreach and advertising budget for Healthcare.gov, Peck founded the nonprofit Get America Covered to do some of that work outside of the government.
"On Sunday, I received an alert that told me that there may be an issue on the site," Peck says. He went to the log-in page and got an error message. "It didn't tell people the system was having a problem, it didn't tell people to wait on the site and try again," he says. "It was incredibly confusing."
Read more: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/12/16/npr-government-extends-open-enrollment-for-aca-health-plans-but-only-for-36-hours
The rest of the article is interesting about how the technical glitches on Dec 15 blew up into a big story, amplified by 3 unnamed (by me) but very prominent Democratic Party candidates (named in the article).
At 843 pm ET Dec 16, I posted just above an article from https://money.yahoo.com/aca-open-enrollment-deadline-231539458.html that said (and still says as I type this at 242 am ET Dec 17) that the deadline has been extended until 3 PM (that's PEE EM) Dec 18. Well then I ran across the above NPR article which I'm posting because it's more accurate and much more interesting and informative. It says the deadline is 3 AM (that's AAA EM) Dec 18. This also agrees with the CMS Statement below and the healthcare.gov statement below (which I had posted before but had not noticed the AM thingy, sigh)
CMS Statement on Health Insurance Exchange Open Enrollment Extension
https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cms-statement-health-insurance-exchange-open-enrollment-extension
http://www.healthcare.gov
I also bent the LBN rules by adding " (Dec 18 3 AM ET) " to the title - given that what was initially posted was wrong so as to give it more visibility. I'd hate to see people who read the earlier version with the 3 pm deadline to not see this change of deadline, arghh. LBN practice has been to allow small modifications to the title when needed for clarity, e.g. "Legislature passes ground-breaking reproductive justice law (IL)" where the (IL) is added to the original title because it came from a local paper while the international audience that DU is would have no idea which legislature without plowing into the body of the article. (I made up this example entirely, I have no idea what Illinois has passed).
The old link ( https://money.yahoo.com/aca-open-enrollment-deadline-231539458.html ) has a picture of a ACA navigator with a big "Obamacare" on the back of his t-shirt, plus about 4 common questions, all in Spanish. Its interesting to me the "Obamacare" rather than "Affordable Care Act" or somesuch.
Related story that many of us woke up to in LBN
Congress to permanently repeal 3 major health taxes in year-end spending deal
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142408218
= new reply since forum marked as read
Basically two more days: today Monday and tomorrow
I'm in a que for a callback, so I'll know my answer soon enough.
Thanks for the reply, though. 
