How One Failure Cycle Works With Screenshots of Selected Screens

Since my failure experience is repeatable, I loaded a screen shot extension into Chrome and went through the process to get screens I wanted to comment on. By the way, I really like the Screen Shot (by Google) Extension. It lets you take screen shots of parts of screens, easily redact information, and easily annotate information.

So, here we go....

This is the landing screen. I can see my profile or my applications. As you can see, I have an application that is "in progress". What would I like to do? Why I'd be delighted to view my current application.

And voila! It says:

You haven't finished your application for health coverage. You must complete and submit your application to find out if you're eligible for coverage and to enroll into a plan.

Well, from that, it's apparent that the ball is in my court. I have not yet submitted my application, even though I have, in fact, been told I have submitted it like 10 times so far. The only choice seems to be Continue Application. The first screen is just a check box and Save and Continue. Nothing interesting.

OK, this one is long. It is my contact information. I hate this screen. Every time this screen shows up, it shows me defaults and the option to use the defaults or override them. It asks "Is this your home address?" but then selects "no" and fills in the "Home address" section. So I go back and check the "Is this your home address?" check box.

Then it does the same idiocy with the phone number. I tell it that the phone number they have is my prefered phone number.

Then it does the same idiocy for how I want to be reached. I am an internet savvy guy so I want to be reached by my email account. So I check the perennially unchecked "Use this email address: (my redacted email address). When I check that, it fills in the email field. Then, there is a, perhaps, 1 in 3 chance that it will want me to fill it in again in the "Re-enter email address" field. Yikes! Sometimes it wants that, sometimes it doesn't? Are there different servers with different validation policies and I'm randomly assigned to them? Or what? That's just insane!

But soon enough I'm done correcting the stupidest page in the history of government healthcare. Or am I?

No! I am not. Because it needs clarification on my address. I annotated this screen shot. Basically what has happened is that I gave it an address and it found a "different" address that it thinks I live at. What's the "difference"?

Well here are the differences:

1. My address is normal mixed case; theirs is ugly ALL CAPS
2. My address has the 5 digit ZIP code; they show all 9 digits
3. My address spells out "Drive"; theirs abbreviates it "DR"

So I select my address because I despise ALL CAPS. I grumble that their sameness algorithm is stupid and press Continue. I think there are few boring screens before getting to this boring one:

I don't really know why I took a screen shot of this. I guess just to show that I'm only applying for myself. The next one may be the next one.

As I said in earlier posts, I tried to go through this using Yes the first time, but decided that my life is good enough and I can deal with the payments even though I'm eligible for help from Uncle Sam.

So soon enough I get to this screen:

My issue with this screen is that sometimes my SSN already appears and sometimes it doesn't. It should either consistently appear or always require me to enter it. I shouldn't be able to use whether it appears or not to decide if the Green Bay Packers get to choose whether to kick-off or receive. Also, I'm not sure what the name on my SS card is. I don't have it handy--it's in storage. I use my passport for ID. I do have a middle name and it may or may not be on my SS card. But it's not like my name changed as the result of a marriage or adoption or legal name change--it just, at worst, is missing the middle name.

Before long, I'll get to the race screen.

It never populates this. I suppose it doesn't store this data in the database, but just in session variables? The first few times I did this, it asked be separately after this screen if I was Pacific Islander or Native Alaskan or something. It doesn't do that anymore.

Anyway, getting close to the end.

I have to give my electronic signature, which I guess is just my name. At least, that's what I put in there.

I want you to notice something about this screen that puzzles me. There are two buttons. One is green and one is gray. To me, if I see two buttons and they are different colors, I tend to think that the color means something. Green almost always means "valid" or something like that. Gray often translates into "not yet valid" or "disabled" or something like that. I've been to this screen about 10 times, but I've never clicked the green button to see what would happen. That might be a blog post for tomorrow while I'm getting my maintenance chemotherapy. I've only ever clicked on the gray button, even though it's gray.

The text says:

You have started an application for health coverage, but have not yet completed ID proofing. Without completing ID proofing, you cannot submit your application for an eligibility determination. We need more information from you to establish your identity. We might ask you to submit copies of identification documents.
Click Save and Continue to ID Proofing to start the process.

So I need the next step to work, apparently, if my application is to be entered. When I click the ominously gray button, I get this:

It says:

We've reveived your application as of 10/9/2013
We will provide eligibility results after establishing identity.

As you can see, there is nothing on this dialog box to save. There are 2 ways to dismiss it, I think. I could click the X in the upper right hand corner. Or I could click the green Save & Continue button. I'm puzzled again. Are they different? I'm not clear on why I would click one and not the other. I want to continue even though there is nothing to save, so I have only ever clicked the green button and never the X. At this point I can see that the address bar in Chrome goes to a web page containing the text "IDProofingGetStarted" but after a second or so, it errors out, perhaps with "Unexpected Error". Then, without fail, it will go back to the My Profile page.

So the thing I want you to notice on the My Profile page is that my name has, right under it, a little green check that says "Identity verified". So healthcare.gov knows that I am who I say I am, yet it pukes at the very moment it goes to ensure I am who I say I am. Over and over and over.

This is the highlight reel of one of my attempts to apply for health insurance. I have been through this about 10 times. The reason I made his page is that I have to try to google and haven't found anyone else trying to document their experiences to see if they are having the same kinds of trouble as I am.

If I could have anything, I would just ask that I be informed when the ID verification part of the process works properly. That's all I ask. I'm wasting my time trying to use it if that doesn't work. I just want to know when that one part is functioning properly.