Your ObamaCare Fail of the Day

The headline to the the story (above) pretty much says it all. But let’s go for some details:

The administration has finally announced the error rate for 834 transmissions, the data sent to insurance companies after applicants fill out their information on the Healthcare.gov marketplace. It’s not good: one in ten forms contain errors, a spokesperson told reporters during a press call today.

834 is short for “834 Electronic Data Interchange Transmissions” or “834 EDI Transactions,” the files that get passed to insurance companies so new enrollees can be added to their systems. This is a critical function of the federal marketplace: if it doesn’t correctly communicate with insurers, people won’t get the coverage they think they’ve signed up for.

One in ten? Better than I thought. Hell, it’s better than I think. I’m certain, given what we know for sure already, that the Administration is using some deceptive metric (put a plan in your shopping basket and they’ll count it as purchased) to seriously lowball the real figure.

And this isn’t like UPS or Amazon screwing up your order and you send the DVD back for the right one. This is your health insurance.

FWIW, UPS has lost exactly one of my Amazon packages and Amazon has sent me the wrong item exactly one time since I became a customer late last century. And I’ve bought a lot — a lot — of stuff from them over the years.

But buying books and stuff is easy. Buying insurance is hard.