{"id":884,"date":"2013-04-30T20:12:29","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T01:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/?p=884"},"modified":"2013-05-01T21:05:51","modified_gmt":"2013-05-02T02:05:51","slug":"cohn-obamacares-new-paperwork-is-simpler-than-private-insurers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/cohn-obamacares-new-paperwork-is-simpler-than-private-insurers\/","title":{"rendered":"Cohn: Obamacare’s New Paperwork Is Simpler than Private Insurers’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good stuff from Jonathan Cohn again. \u00a0Read the full post<\/a>. \u00a0Here are what seem to me to be the crucial excerpts:<\/p>\n

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Obamacare’s New Paperwork Is Simpler than Private Insurers’<\/a><\/h2>\n

A reason to hope that implementation won’t go as badly as people fear<\/em><\/p>\n

The “chaos” of Obamacare just got a little less chaotic. On Tuesday morning, the Obama Administration released its new insurance application, for use on the new health insurance marketplaces. The marketplaces are for people without employer-sponsored coverage, and the idea has always been to make the application process as simple as possible.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t look so great in March, when the administration released a prototype of the application. The paper version was 15 pages long for a family of three. That\u2019s not quite as bad as it sounds. The form would have appeared shorter online, and not everybody would have been forced to fill out the entire thing. But many people still found it intimidating…<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

But administration officials say they listened to the critics and, after the initial release, made a concerted effort to simplify. …<\/p>\n

The result is a new, sleeker application. (You can see the full family version here<\/a>.) … I tried the application myself and it took me less than ten minutes to fill out the whole thing. Apparently that\u2019s pretty average: Administration officials say that, in their tests, the average completion time was seven minutes. \u00a0\u00a0And I\u2019m not the only one impressed. Time\u2019s Joe Klein<\/a>, who was among those criticizing the old application and the first to report on the new one, says the improvement \u201cshows the Administration is alert and flexible and responsive\u2014and, if we\u2019re lucky, may turn out to be innovative in enacting a system that will bring health care to those who haven\u2019t had it before, and lower costs to the self-employed masses who\u2019ve had to go out and buy insurance on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

That last point is critical. And to fully\u00a0appreciate it, you should compare it to some of the applications available today. In my home state of Michigan, as in many states, the largest insurer selling individual coverage is Blue Cross Blue Shield. The application for its \u201cOne Blue\u201d plan\u2014you can see it here<\/a>\u2014is longer and more complicated than Obamacare\u2019s. And if you look closely, you\u2019ll see why. The application has a whole page of questions about prior medical conditions.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Now go back to the Obamacare application and look for the questions about medical history. You won’t find any. That’s because, once the law is in effect, medical history won\u2019t matter. Insurers won\u2019t be able to treat the healthy and sick differently. That alone is a huge change for the better.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are still a million things that could go wrong between now and October, when the new exchanges are supposed to open for business (so that coverage can become effective on January 1). When it comes to eligibility, the biggest challenge isn\u2019t getting the information. It\u2019s processing that information properly, so that people end up with the right kind of coverage, and at the right price. Given the complexity of the system, and active resistance of so many officials at the state level, some problems with implementation are virtually inevitable\u2014and, based on what I\u2019ve been hearing, more likely than not to happen. But this new form is another sign<\/a> that things won\u2019t go as badly as some people fear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n