Obamacare: There is no way to add newborns to coverage on the healthcare website

  In years past it was fairly easy to add a newborn baby to your healthcare insurance policy, however now that the government has become involved in your healthcare it might not be so easy if this story is correct:

the coming months will open up a whole new world of problems with HealthCare.gov, including the site’s inability to place new babies under their parents’ coverage.

The Associated Press is out with a report this morning that pregnant women have an entirely new set of headaches to expect from their ACA-triggered coverage, namely, that HealthCare.gov is not designed to accept any changes in status that would include or exclude a person from coverage. When a baby is born, there is no way for parents to notify the federal government that the baby now exists and needs coverage.

  But having a baby isn’t the only status change which could be affected:

There is also no way to notify the federal government of marriage or divorce, of a death in the family, or of a new job or loss of a job.

  All of these scenarios could offer new options for a person, if the website allowed it:

The website allows one to open a profile, but not to edit it once an insurer is chosen. All of these changes could potentially affect those insured or open new options for coverage from different insurers or types of insurance. They may also result in higher premiums or more expensive coverage. These would all be options and possibilities if HealthCare.gov had any way of editing one’s information on the page.

  You may be wondering how this was allowed to happen. It appears as if after the disastrous roll out of the Obamacare website the regime was so focused on the front-end problems that it did not have time to focus on the real issues surrounding the Obamacare website:

Insurers say computerized “change in circumstance” updates to deal with family and life developments were supposed to have been part of the federal system from the start.

But that feature got postponed as the government scrambled to fix technical problems that overwhelmed the health care website during its first couple of months.

“It’s just another example of `We’ll fix that later,'” said Bob Laszewski, an industry consultant who said he’s gotten complaints from several insurer clients. “This needed to be done well before January. It’s sort of a fly-by-night approach.”

  This, of course, is what happens when the government tries to fix a problem. They do nothing to ameliorate the crisis, they only deepen it.