Many critical parts required for the HealthCare.gov site to run efficiently are still missing, reports Politico. One key function includes the piece that accurately pays insurers. If these glitches continue to go untouched, experts believe larger accounting problems like causing high premiums could surface.
If the operating system continues to be problematic, federal officials cannot determine how many of the 8 million enrollees have actually paid their premiums. And without further development of the site, officials cannot gauge how many attempted enrollments were never completed, noted Politico.
Last October, once the site went live, many complained about the website's flaws. One major issue was that the software could not accurately determine how much consumers would pay for coverage, FierceHealthPayer previously reported.
And while officials blamed the problems on the site's higher-than-expected usage, the Obama administration neglected these "back-burner" issues and focused their attention on fixing the part of the site consumers would use to enroll in coverage.
Earlier this month, the Obama administration posted a document saying insurers will be paid through an interim accounting process until at least September. But when the permanent accounting system goes live, it could lead to massive payment corrections, notes the article.
"Despite significant improvements on the consumer-facing side of HealthCare.gov, the federally-facilitated marketplace still faces significant challenges with back-end data errors, significant manual workarounds, delayed functionalities, and improvements for the 2015 plan year," America's Helath Insurance Plans wrote in a recent letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
A fully functional system may show inflated enrollment numbers, which could cause some insurers to exit exchange marketplaces and cause premiums to skyrocket, Politico noted.
For more:
- here's the Politico article