State Exchange Weirdness Roundup

Just a few things to note...

MASSACHUSETTS: The MA Health Connector allows for online premium payments (and in fact, payments have to be made to the exchange, not to the insurance company itself). The good news is that the website & billing system appear to be working properly this year, a vast improvement over last year's disaster. The bad news (or, odd news anyway) is that for some reason the system requires you to pay using only direct electronic fund transfers or a written check--it does not accept credit card payments!

I don't know if this is for technical reasons (which I doubt) or policy reasons (avoiding the 2.5% transaction fees or whatever), but it seems very odd to me.

HAWAII: Not only hasn't the HI Health Connector provided any enrollment updates since open enrollment started again on November 15th, they haven't even updated their enrollment report section since July 26th! Guys, either post an update or at least remove the link entirely; keeping it as is, locked in on 7/26 is just embarrassing.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: The good news is that DC's exchange blog has indeed been updated fairly recently. The bad news is that none of it has anything to do with actual enrollment news...or anything to do with the ACA, for that matter. The last update with that data was back on October 9th. The 10 entries since then are essentially just general "DC area news" including a public notice about a burglary on 11th Street.

I guess there's nothing wrong with posting stuff of general interest to DC residents...but would it kill DCHealthLink to actually post some news about their own operations?

RHODE ISLAND: Ut-oh. This can't be good. Here's what the RI exchange website (which has been one of the best-operating ones to date) looks like at the moment: UPDATE 7:26pm: OK, never mind, it's back online now.