



After an application is completed through the exchanges (state or federal; web, phone, paper or in-person), eligibility is determined, and the applicant choose a health plan, the insurance company providing that plan needs to be relayed that information so they can begin deducting the premium and providing coverage. Republicans, and their media mouthpiece s have been focusing their fire on this piece: pointing out that it was experiencing flaws and glitches that resulted in insurance companies not having on rosters some people who signed up through Healthcare.gov.







Well, it seems that talking point too has come to an fast but deserving death. The form the exchanges transmit to the health plans is called the 834 form, and the errors on those forms are now down to less than 4/10-ths of 1%

What is most interesting to note is that the error rate fell to near-zero just when the enrollment numbers began to surge. That is great news.



But I do understand that this has the very negative effect of ruining the Republicans' Christmas and new year. Oh, well. You can't win'em all.

In his final press conference of the year on Friday, President Obama noted the enrollment surge at Healthcare.gov and state exchanges. But as the president's team has worked day and night to fix the website problems, and succeeded in doing so - thus retiring GOP's "ZOMG the website is slow, now everything is ruined" hysteria, right wing detractors of health reform have focused on a different part of the system: the part that follows the completed application.