Navigators hired to enroll people in ObamaCare in New York were nowhere to be found, unreachable or unable to do their jobs because of computer glitches during the much-anticipated — but sputtering — rollout last week, an informal Post survey reveals.
The state Health Department hired 50 contractors and trained 500 navigators to help sign up residents for medical insurance through new ObamaCare individual and small-business “benefit exchanges” at 350 locations across the city.
But The Post identified numerous problems in inquiries made at dozens of sites:
- At some locations, staffers were unaware of the program.
- Many navigators were still being trained and unavailable for service during last week’s rollout.
- Anticipating a week of chaos, some health-care providers postponed enrolling people.
- Voicemails were not returned at sites that listed numbers for their navigators.
- Navigators who did work said they were unable to enroll people online because they were locked out of the state site due to computer snafus.
“The system is overwhelmed,” said Wanda, a navigator at the Hispanic Federation-Puerto Rican Family Institute site on Debevoise Street in Brooklyn. “I’m unable to get access to the computer system.”
Sites in The Bronx, the city’s poorest borough, got off to a particularly rocky start. “No, they don’t do that here,” said a woman answering the phone at Mega Radio Taxi Dispatch, a Hispanic Federation navigation site on Southern Boulevard.
“I haven’t heard anything about it yet,” said a staffer at the Hispanic Federation Southern Boulevard Improvement District, Bronx.
“Nobody has been here yet,” said a staffer at the 167th Street African Market in The Bronx.
“We haven’t trained people yet,” said a staffer at LIFT The Bronx, Belmont Avenue, being served by the Community Service Society of New York.
Even better-prepared locations were deluged by the volume of people seeking help.
The Community Services Center of Greater Williamsburg in Brooklyn provided extensions for three navigators — none of whom could be reached as calls were dumped into voicemail.
Some organizations, anticipating hiccups and glitches during the rollout’s launch, didn’t bother to enroll people last week.
“It’s a huge program. It’s going to take time to come together,” said Jim Brown, national health director of the Actors Fund, Manhattan, which will begin signing up people this week.