HealthCare.gov: "Your search returned zero results."

[eridani]

http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/why-your-insurance-plans-been-disappeared-obamas-healthcaregov

Here's a curious twist in the unfolding open-data story. The Obama administration's HealthCare.gov insurance portal actually contains less information after Friday's upgrade to include the prices of insurance plans than it did when it first launched back in March. That's intentional. And it speaks to the difficulties of equipping the public with powerful new data when there are powerful forces who are clinging to the old way of doing business.

The easiest way to understand this is to use as a case study, well, me. Quite naturally, when HealthCare.gov launched in March as mandated by the health care reform package passed by Congress and signed by President Obama, I gave it a test drive using more or less my own demographics (healthy, 26-64, living in Brooklyn, of some means) and told it that I wanted to buy an individual health insurance plan. At least a few options popped up. Fast-forward to Friday, when, as also mandated by law, the site introduced the inclusion of pricing information on individual health insurance plans, meant to give American consumers a way to comparison-shop for health insurance coverage by creating apples-to-apples comparison between various companies' various product offerings.

This time, HealthCare.gov sends back a response telling me, "Your search returned zero results." I know that there are health insurance plans I qualify for. So what gives?

<snip>

You can make the argument that, from a consumers prospective, it's better to know that Blue Cross, for example, offers one option for insurance that you might qualify for, even if you still have to call and get the price. But, as we've discussed, the Obama administration doesn't have a whole lot leverage when it comes to compelling insurance companies to hand over that data to the federal government. One carrot and stick all-rolled-up-into-one is that they get listed on HealthCare.gov, where, if all goes well from the government's perspective, significant numbers of people are shopping for health insurance plans. So, in a bid to build for the consumer-citizen a web portal containing more information, the Obama administration has made the choice to withhold some of the information it already has on hand. It's a strategic choice made in a case where the government doesn't have a tremendous number of better options.

[eridani]

1. Kick for Tuesday n/t