DENVER — Connect For Health Colorado, the state’s new health insurance exchange, is acknowledging another problem with its website.
During the recent open enrollment period, a glitch cancelled the existing coverage of up to 3,615 Colorado policyholders who were eligible for automatic renewals of their health insurance plans simply because they were browsing other plan choices on the site, the exchange acknowledged Wednesday.
The problem came to light in recent week as customers began hearing from insurance providers that they were no longer covered.
Overall, some 74,000 policies sold on the exchange were eligible for automatic renewal because the providers were continuing to offer the same policies.
Consumers who weren’t logged into their accounts on the exchange were still able to browse for new policies and compare prices, while those who were logged in saw their plans inadvertently cancelled.
“We are already helping many customers with various renewal scenarios — critical to that process is clearly determining what they want and avoiding making assumptions,” said Curtis Hubbard, a spokesman for the exchange, in a press release Wednesday.
“Some customers did not want to keep their same 2014 benefit options; some have found coverage off the Marketplace and did not want a 2015 plan; and others did intend to renew the same plan but the enrollment has not been completed.”
Insurers have already committed to restoring coverage for all policy-holders who want their old policies restored; and they’re promising to do so retroactive to Jan. 1, thereby ensuring that no one impacted by an accidental cancellation experiences an actual gap in coverage.