The semi-retired computer programmer wanted to view his health insurance options under the Affordable Care Act, and he wasn’t about to let a balky federal website stop him.
Voss, 60, of Iowa City, is one of the first Iowans — possibly the first — to successfully purchase insurance via the problem-plagued website healthcare.gov.
Voss said Monday that he tried more than 100 times before finally being able to sign onto healthcare.gov, type in his personal information, compare insurance plans and purchase a policy.
“My main thing as a computer programmer is persistence,” he said.
He completed the process three days after the government’s online insurance marketplace opened Oct. 1. But he wasn’t positive he’d been successful until his new carrier, CoOportunity Health, called him last Friday to congratulate him on becoming the company’s first customer to sign up via the public system.
Voss said the website was one of the worst he’d seen in years. He said it looked like something from the 1990s. The glitches shouldn’t be fatal, however, he said.
“It looks fixable. But it’s hard to fix things while you’re up and running,” he said. “I wonder if they wouldn’t be better off shutting it down for a week or so” while they take care of it.
Voss said he’d been optimistic that the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, would offer a better deal for him and his wife, Kim Edge, than they were receiving from Wellmark Blue Cross & Blue Shield. Voss said they were paying about $1,300 a month for a plan that had a high-deductible insurance policy with a health savings account. The plan had major coverage holes, he said, and an annual deductible of $5,000.
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