NBC晚间新闻 奥巴马医保申请必须搞清网上申请手续（在线收听）

Obamacare applications must maneuver online maze

奥巴马医保申请必须搞清网上申请手续

Regardless of whether people apply for insurance in person, over the phone or on paper, everyone’s information must be entered into the same portal. NBC’s Peter Alexander reports.

不管人们是本人前往申请，通过电话申请还是填表申请保险，都必须将每个人的信息输入到同一个门户网站。NBC的Peter Alexander报道。

The White House tonight says they have made a lot of progress over this past weekend fixing the obamacare website, but the sign-up page which has been plagued with problems from the start will go offline now every day from 1:00 to 5:00 in the morning eastern time while that so-called tech surge team works to get it right. Also tonight it is becoming clear the problems with the website cannot be avoided by applying on the phone or in person as the president has been suggesting. More tonight from NBC News White House correspondent Peter Alexander.

reporter: In miami today Christina is one of thousands of navigators helping Americans sign up for health insurance offline.

In the beginning it was working but with glitches. Now it's just down. Now the paper application is what we are doing.

reporter: That's what president Obama has urged consumers to do -- bypass the website and apply for insurance the old fashioned way like he did tonight.

They can still apply for coverage by phone, by mail, in person. There was a time when the Internet didn't exist.

reporter: But internal Obama administration memos showed that won't solve the problem. Because the same portal is used to determine eligibility no matter how the application is submitted -- paper or online. One memo reads the paper applications allow people to feel like they are moving forward in the process and provides another option. At the end of the day, we are all stuck in the same queue. Today the White House insisted frustrated consumers can turn to navigators to complete applications for them.

We have never said the end point of the process wouldn't have to go through healthcare.gov.

reporter: That means your personal information still has to maneuver a complex online maze. First the website must be accessed. Then all personal data has to be registered and verified. Next the system must determine eligibility for government subsidies. That information lets consumers shop for a plan. When you finally choose a policy, all that data must be trance lated into a different format that the insurance companies can read.

This program will crumble if you don't find ways in which to deal with the fundamental challenge right now.

reporter: Tonight even Democratic allies are calling for a time-out.

That meaning

shutting this program down for 60, 90, 120 days. I'd much rather see that and the political fallout way may endure because of that than a program that just limps along over the next several months.

reporter: Health policy axperts say the enrollment information sent to insurance companies is still badly flawed. As for the internal memos about applying offline, tonight an administration official says they are notes, not official meeting minutes and they are several weeks old before they say significant progress to the website was made.