Carney: ObamaCare enrollment errors ‘a very small percentage’

The White House on Monday vowed to help the tens of thousands of ObamaCare enrollees who contend that the HealthCare.gov website improperly enrolled them during the sign-up process to purchase new insurance.

“We are going to get them help,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said.

On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that approximately 22,000 Americans had filed appeals with the government to correct errors with their enrollment data. The complaints charge that the ObamaCare marketplace had charged them too much for insurance, incorrectly enrolled them or didn’t enroll them at all.

{mosads}According to the report, the administration has not been able to address the complaints yet because of persisting issues with the enrollment system.

Carney downplayed the issue, noting that the percentage with errors represented “a very small percentage” of the more than 3 million people who have already applied for coverage. He also said that the technical issues generating many of the errors had already been corrected.

“[The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] already is, and has been for some time, reaching out to people who have filed an appeal via phone and email, and so far CMS has seen that many of the problems were related to those earlier system errors that have been fixed,” Carney said. “CMS is also working to implement fully an automated appeals system. Until they have that functionality, we’ve put in place a manual review process — again, phone and email — wherever possible and expect hearings to begin soon on the appeals process.”

Carney added that the website was now functioning for “the vast majority of people who use it” and that the administration would “keep at it.”

“I doubt that there’s any website that is perfect, so there are always going to be issues,” Carney said. “And that’s why we have a team of experts on top of it.”