UPDATED — Many visit state’s new health exchange, but no sign-up estimates as of yet (with related stories)

• By Associated Press and Peninsula Daily News
• Sunday, October 6, 2013 12:01am
• News

Face-to-face help

On the North Olympic Peninsula, public hospitals and agencies offer face-to-face help. They are:

■   Olympic Area Agency on Aging — 411 W. Washington St., Sequim, 360-452-3221; 481 Fifth Ave., Forks, 360-374-9496; and 915 Sheridan St., Port Townsend, 360-385-2552.

■ Volunteers in Medicine of the Olympics — 909 Georgiana St., Port Angeles, 360-457-4431.

■   Olympic Medical Center — 939 Caroline St., Port Angeles, 360-417-7000.

■   Jefferson Healthcare hospital — 834 Sheridan St., Port Townsend, 360-385-2200.

■   Jefferson County Public Health Department — 615 Sheridan St., Port Townsend, 360-385-9400.

■   Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, Port Angeles Health Center — 426 E. Eighth St., Port Angeles, 800-230-7526.

■   Forks Community Hospital, 530 Bogachiel Way, 360-374-6271.

In addition, check with your local insurance broker.

SEATTLE (AP) — After a troubled rollout of the Washington’s new health care website, officials on Friday couldn’t say how many of the state’s one million uninsured people had signed up for health insurance in the first week of operation.

They did know the website had 180,000 total visits, by 43,629 unique visitors.

More than 28,000 accounts were set up, which means people filled out forms with their personal information but didn’t necessarily finish their application or sign up for insurance.

Bethany Frey, spokeswoman for the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, said they won’t have accurate numbers of how many people actually signed up for insurance until Monday, in part because so many couldn’t get online and filled out a paper application.

“Anything I gave you would be wildly inaccurate,” she said, after talking to the system’s data crunchers.

Operators at the call center, who were also writing down some information on paper, took more than 20,000 calls since the program launched on Tuesday.

Those who went to community centers and other places to get in-person assistance, also had their information taken on paper first.

Many Washington residents who set out to tackle an online application on their own turned to the call center for help when they ran into problems, either because of glitches on the website or because they didn’t understand something about the process.

The Washington Health Benefit Exchange reported average call center wait times of 14 minutes in the first week.

Some customers said they waited much longer and others reported the phone system hung up on them after a recorded announcement about unusually heavy call volumes.

Joel DeJong, who runs a small health related business in Seattle, said he stayed on hold for about an hour before hanging up.

DeJong, 37, whose family of five is uninsured, said he tried the website first and returned to it every day until computer problems wore him down.

He finally gave up on Friday after he couldn’t convince wahealthplanfinder.org that his wife and three kids were all American citizens.

He tried to sign up as soon as the new health care program went online Tuesday because he was so excited about the idea of getting insurance for the first time in year.

DeJong used to pay $1,000 a month for his healthy family to be insured, but they decided it wasn’t worth it.

He was excited about the new health care law and can’t wait to get his family signed up.

“I feel like I’m pretty tech savvy,” said DeJong, who has applied for jobs online and even bought insurance online. “I can’t get through this website without talking to somebody.

His next step will be visiting one of the community centers offering help and getting someone else to navigate the system for him.

Some people did manage to get through the application process and review their choices, but some of them chose not to buy insurance through the exchange for other reasons.

Astrid Rial of Tacoma said she and her husband will stick with the family insurance they buy through the Association of Washington Business, after seeing the prices on the new state exchange.

“I was hoping to get better coverage for my money,” Rial said. “What I found was sticker shock.”

Rial and her husband, who run a small consulting and training business and have one child at home, do not qualify for a federal subsidy.

They currently pay $777 a month for insurance. The least expensive plan they found on the exchange was $783 for a lot less coverage than they have now. The most expensive plan was $1,536.

She said her current plan is pretty basic: “I call our plan the coal plan.”

That’s her riff off the new federal guidelines that label plans as silver, gold, etc. But even her own health insurance company, Premera, seemed to offer more expensive plans on the Washington healthplanfinder, Rial said.

“I was hoping that the Affordable Care Act would provide better coverage for the same monthly premium or maybe even lower my monthly premium,” she said.

The plan for the future for Rial and her husband, who are both 51: Stay on their current plan unless something changes and they need more health insurance.

Washington residents have six months to buy health insurance through the new exchange during the first enrollment period ending in March.

The state estimates about 1 million Washington state residents do not have health insurance, or about one in seven people.

The state hopes to enroll 130,000 people for health insurance in 2014 and another 280,000 in 2015. Another 325,000 people will be eligible to sign up for free insurance through Medicaid.

Under the Affordable Care Act, people who don’t have insurance in 2014 will pay a fine when they file their federal income taxes in early 2015.

he fines for people who ignore the new law are scheduled to increase over time.