WASHINGTON — OK, you’ve signed up online for ObamaCare and sent in the first premium payment. You’re good to go.
Not so fast.
The onus is on consumers to make sure their payments get to insurance companies if they want their plans to take effect before the deadline for mandatory health coverage, an Obama administration official told The Post.
Americans have to sign up by Dec. 23 and then make a payment to get covered starting Jan. 1.
That seemingly simple task is complicated by continued glitches on the back end of the ObamaCare Web site, which has been garbling personal information transferred to insurance companies.
Officials said 80 percent of the errors so far have been inaccurate Social Security numbers.
The administration refused to say how many people who have already signed up were affected by transmission issues.
“Consumers should definitely call their insurers,” said Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokeswoman Julie Bataille.
The administration gave the same advice about making payments.
The process varies from state to state, with some accepting credit-card payments and others — New York among them — relying on direct payments to insurers.
On the HealthCare.gov site, which the federal government runs for 36 states, an orange message is supposed to appear informing users that they must make a payment.
In states without the credit-card option, the consumer then waits to be contacted by the insurance company with payment directions.
“If a consumer doesn’t receive that notice or is unsure as to whether they successfully enrolled, they should contact our call center or the insurer of their choice,” said the administration official.
Meanwhile, Americans keep encountering delays and error messages.
After the site’s relaunch Sunday, it hit peak traffic of 375,000 visitors in a 12-hour period ending at noon Monday, said Bataille. The site is designed to handle 50,000 users at once.
But Bataille said that the administration deployed a new “advanced queuing system” that makes people wait to enter the site or sends an e-mail suggesting logging on later.