MIAMI (AP) — When insurance agent Kelly Fristoe recently spent 30 minutes helping a client pick a mid-level health plan and the HealthCare.gov federal exchange enrollment system froze, he called the government's hotline and tried to finish the application.
The operator refused to credit Fristoe as an agent on the application, meaning he wouldn't get the commission or be listed as the follow-up contact if his client needed help again later.
The Wichita Falls, Texas, insurance agent is one of many brokers around the country finding frustration as they try to help customers navigate the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) exchanges while earning the commissions they've long built their businesses around.
Some insurers and insurance agents are calling on President Barack Obama's administration to allow them to bypass HealthCare.gov and enroll consumers directly amid growing complaints about problems with enrollment information generated from the website.
The so-called 'back-end' problems could mean that consumers who think they've successfully signed up for a health plan, may find themselves unable to access their coverage come January. The problems include enrollment information that's rendered practically useless by errors, duplication or garbles. Efforts to fix the issues are under way.
Nearly 70,000 agents and brokers have been certified nationwide to sell health insurance on the federal exchange. Many say they could be the troubled health law's best ambassadors, with the potential to boost lackluster enrollment figures — only about 27,000 had enrolled via HealthCare.gov nationwide in the first month.
But instead, many agents said they're continually met by obstacles.
"You look at this dismal number they have of how many people have enrolled on HealthCare.gov," said Fristoe. "If they would just relax and loosen up, because me and all of my associates across this nation want to help these consumers get enrolled into the market."
Federal health officials announced on Nov. 22 that they'd fixed some portions of the website to allow more insurers and insurance agents to enroll consumers directly. The feds are asking roughly 16 insurers, agents and brokers in Florida, Texas and Ohio to test it out and give detailed feedback about the fixes, hoping to expand it to other states in the coming weeks. Health officials have been vague about the scope of the botched applications insurers are receiving and what steps they're taking to fix the problems. One bug related to Social Security numbers, which federal health officials said accounted for more than 80 percent of insurers' problems, was fixed last weekend.
But the problems have persisted, prompting the head of the National Association of Health Underwriters (NAHU) to write the president Tuesday, urging him to make additional fixes a priority, saying agents have a significant backlog of clients with incomplete applications.
"We want to make it clear that a number of back-end technical obstacles still exist for health insurance agents and brokers trying to actively support the federal marketplace," said NAHU Chief Executive Janet Trautwein.
Insurance industry executives also met with Obama last month and encouraged him to let them take a more active role in enrolling consumers in the 36 states relying on the federal website. Brokers' frustrations with the website are amplified by the pressure they face to add customers to offset reductions in their commissions under the law.