EIAonline

WASHINGTON, D.C. – “We regret to inform you that effective January 1, 2014, we will no longer offer our Individual & Family plans in your county.”

That’s the money quote from a letter I received from my health insurer yesterday. So I was forced into a first-hand trial of Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange. I don’t know if my experience was typical, but it took two hours just to register on the site. Constant reloading in order to complete each of the site’s dozen of pages may account for the lion’s share of the millions of page views reported.

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My application never got past the page where I entered my address. Early this morning I tried to at least move the process along a little, but the log-in page had this cheerful message:

Yep, it’s so successful no one can sign up. I wonder what kind of coverage Ben Nelson has these days?

UPDATE: Managed to log on and complete the application, but could not submit it because no matter what I did, it would not accept my answer that I was a U.S. citizen. If I responded I wasn’t a U.S. citizen, it would accept that information. Could not correct it. After two hours, gave up and printed out the 36-page application to be mailed in. At least it will be accurate, though how long it will take for a response is anyone’s guess.