Impossible Health Care Websites

Today I tried to sign-up for health insurance at 3 sites. I don’t need anything fancy, just minimum coverage so that I can cover my ass while I get this new start-up off the ground. What happened? Fail after bloody fail.

Strike 1

First site I tried was Kaiser Permanente. I found their online quote competitive and recognized the name. Figured it would go smooth. NOT. My effective date was 1 month too late. So, I restarted a new application hoping to resolve it, but no. Still wrong. Picked-up the phone and was surprised that customer services reps were fielding phone calls at 9 pm on a Monday night. After being transferred several times and quizzed over and over, I stopped at sharing my SSN and hung-up. One down.

Strike 2

I then went to Covered CA site. Surely the government has a system to proxy all my data securely and realiably. Nope. Created an account, charged through their enrollment process and then full stop with:

The Federal Data Services Hub is not accessible at this time to confirm your identity. Please come back later to finish your application.

Okay, this is a tell tale sign of a robust system. NOT. Abandon ship there as well.

Strike 3

Moved on to third provider: Health Net. They have a “Net” in the name, they must know how to run a website? This proved to be more wishful thinking. After enrolling, they display a page with my password in plain-text. The password clearly wasn’t hashed when saved in the database. Face palm. For style points I screen shot it and blur it for posting to plaintextoffenders.com. At least I get Internet nerd credit for enduring the first half of the process. I know all the healthcare companies disrespect my privacy. I charge onward knowing I can’t do any better.

As part of the process, I need to upload a document stating my termination of benefits. Fine, reasonable request. However, they find clever ways to surprise me as the site replies with:

Error : Sorry, but the file Resignation Exit Checklist.signed.pdf should not have any spaces in the file name

I’m sorry, are you kidding me? This is a new level of incompetence. I remove the spaces and throw it over the wall again awaiting my next surprise which has not yet come.

Update 2015.04.28

To login, it pops-up a “username” login window. Then directs me to a new page where I can enter just my password. Whaaaat? Why?

Upon trying to login to Health Net, suddenly my password is too long. The password input field was only 15 characters. After some hacking with Chrome I was able to extend it 20+ characters and then finally fill my password in login.

After logging in, I was hoping to change my password so I don’t need to re-write the broken page each time, but that’s just not an option. These people. Seriously?

And to continue the frustration Kaiser Permanente and Covered CA keep emailing me once a week reminding me to finish my application. If only I could…

Conclusion

My personal information has been put in the hands of the most incompetent set of sites I have ever visited. It will surely be stolen. When it’s stolen, I can be certain that nobody will ever know as these clowns won’t even know their security was breached since they can’t even handle a file upload with spaces in it. FML.