Nevada Health Exchange Follow Up

The Nevada health exchange continues to struggle three weeks after launch. Today the Las Vegas Sun reports on the ongoing problems with the site:

While Nevada’s health insurance marketplace was held up as a model for other states
in the early days of its development, many consumers trying to shop for
health insurance have had difficulties using the state’s Nevada Health
Link website now that it’s up and running.

Much of the system just wasn’t ready days before the website was set to launch, according to a progress report from Nevada Health Link.

Last week Breitbart News was first to report on similar documents which demonstrated that the Nevada exchange was “at a high risk overall” just weeks before launch. In addition, critical systems which allowed paperless transfer of
applications from the exchange to insurers were not working. The state
was forced to use a print and ship process instead. Today’s report by the Sun links the Breitbart story in a line that reads “Officials acknowledge that they launched a website that is a work in progress.”

State officials continue to try to downplay the significance of the problems even as significant parts of the website are just beginning to work:

A web portal allowing insurance brokers to access the system also
wasn’t up and running as of last week, brokers said. The web portal
finally went live Friday.

But for the first two weeks of the exchange, brokers who had wanted to help consumers couldn’t.

“We’re losing business, and we aren’t able to help the people,” said Hawley MacLean, CEO of the Reno-based MacLean Financial Group last week. “It’s a big issue that needs to be resolved immediately.”

Nevada plans to announce the number of people who have purchased insurance on the exchange in mid-December.