Covered California Exchange Launches

The Covered California health insurance exchange began operations this week with a significant interest from consumers and some glitches that impacted their ability to receive information.

Although Covered California officials had said its website, coveredcalifornia.com, received more than 5 million hits during its first day of operation on Oct. 1, officials on Wednesday backed away from that claim. Instead, officials said the exchange website received 645,000 hits that included 515,000 unique visitors. 

No data on exact enrollment will be released until November, so it is unclear how many people have purchased insurance since the launch. 

Covered California officials project between 487,000 and 696,000 residents who will be eligible for subsidies will purchase coverage during the open enrollment period, which ends on March 31.

But consumers were challenged in obtaining accurate information involving bronze-level plans, which have the lowest premiums and many policy experts believe will attract the largest number of buyers. Bronze plans offered by Kaiser Permanente and L.A. Care Health Plan were conspicuously absent in the “shop and compare” section of the website on Tuesday and Wednesday.

A Covered California senior advisor confirmed the issue on Wednesday and said it was connected to how its website manages zip codes in its database and correlates them to plan data. She added that consumers who continued past that section of the website to buy coverage would be presented with all the plans available to them. Officials said the issue was expected to be corrected by Thursday.

Officials with L.A. Care, which covers about 1 million Medi-Cal enrollees in Los Angeles County and is offering its first commercial product through the exchange, seemed unfazed by the problem.

“It's a technological glitch, and they're still working out the kinks,” said Amy Gurango, an L.A. Care spokesperson.