Capitol Hill staffers who signed up for ObamaCare through the District’s exchange are being told to confirm their enrollments in person.
An email from the Senate Disbursing Office, obtained by The Hill, warns Capitol Hill staffers they shouldn’t trust the information provided to them by the DC Health Link (DCHL) site.
“It is essential that you confirm your coverage in DCHL through the Disbursing Office,” the email reads.
“Please do not assume you are covered unless you have seen the confirmation letter from the Disbursing Office.”
The warning adds another ObamaCare headache for staffers and lawmakers, who raced this week to sign up on the exchanges to meet the Dec. 9 deadline for having coverage in 2014.
It also underscores a broader challenge facing the online exchanges.
While the administration claims to have met its goal of having HealthCare.gov running smoother for most consumers, back-end problems with the system persist.
That has lawmakers worried individuals who believe they’ve purchased a plan under ObamaCare will discover they never actually enrolled because of a system error.
“Who is going to guarantee that the doctor that sees a patient on Jan. 4 is actually covered for that visit?” Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) asked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Wednesday.
Under pressure from media outlets, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last week revealed that up to 25 percent of enrollment transmissions sent from HealthCare.gov to insurers were either garbled or contained bad data.
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