Seattle pottery company getting calls for Maryland’s health exchange
Jan 22, 2014, 8:45 AM | Updated: 8:48 am
A Seattle company is now playing a small role in the continuing public difficulties of some state health exchanges to get up and running under the Affordable Care Act.
Seattle Pottery Supply started getting calls from Maryland in October. They were from Maryland residents looking for answers from that state’s exchange.
“We’ve continued to get more and more calls and of course when the deadlines approached they would increase,” says Seattle Pottery Supply co-owner Sue Lunz.
It seems the Maryland exchange was giving out the wrong number for its residents. It listed Seattle Pottery Supply’s 800-number.
“We tried to contact the authorities that might correct this, which we did. We just assumed at that time that it would be corrected and things would get better, but it didn’t,” says Lunz.
Lunz says no one in Maryland was able to fix the mistake and get the proper number out to the public. It took calls from the media and concerned residents to the Maryland Governor’s office before the issue was addressed.
But the wrong number calls are still coming.
“There must be some pamphlet that still is out there floating around,” says Lunz. “It’s still out there.”
Lunz says it’s been inconvenient for her and very frustrating for people looking for help from Maryland.
“It’s really sad for both parties. It’s annoying to us, it’s annoying to them, they’re just trying to figure it out on a deadline. It’s just too bad that for whatever reason government bureaucracy makes it difficult to correct their own mistakes.”
And Lunz says it’s a good thing the number Maryland mistakenly gave out belonged to somebody trustworthy, like her company.
She says someone could have stolen a lot of personal data from the callers, if they had wanted to take advantage of the situation.
Maryland’s exchange has been having a lot trouble getting up and running. Its website crashed on the first day and was sending people to other state’s insurance navigators by mistake.
The state is organizing hearings in the Maryland legislature to try and figure out why it’s having so much trouble.
