The Washington health insurance exchange website was back up and running Sunday morning.
Exchange staff took down the Healthplanfinder website hours after the launch of the open enrollment period Saturday, when it was discovered tax credits were being incorrectly calculated.
The glitch was fixed and the site relaunched at 8 a.m. Saturday, according to a statement from Washington Health Benefit Exchange CEO Richard Onizuka:
At 8 a.m., Washington Healthplanfinder was open, available and correctly receiving 2015 tax credit information from the state’s Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) eligibility service.
Soon after opening yesterday morning, our quality control team saw that the 2015 tax credit amounts coming from the state’s eligibility system were incorrect. In order to protect consumers from submitting incorrect applications, the Exchange took Washington Healthplanfinder offline to resolve the issue. The Exchange worked with its system partner DSHS to identify the tax credit issue, implement the necessary fix and test the system throughout the evening to ensure it was resolved.
The Exchange’s new system and application monitoring processes allowed us to quickly identify this issue. The speed in recognizing that Washington Healthplanfinder was receiving incorrect tax credit data prevented thousands of consumers from running into issues with their applications.
We have identified fewer than 800 customers who had their eligibility determined incorrectly and less than 150 hundred customers who scheduled payment. We will be contacting each person to provide them with their accurate tax credit amount.
Our consumers are always top of mind in making any decision related to Washington Healthplanfinder. Consumers expect to be selecting and purchasing health coverage with the correct information. While we recognize that this Saturday was an inconvenience, being able to provide correct information to our customers is paramount to what we do.”
