When Lisa Price received notice that she would no longer be covered by her insurance provider as of Jan. 1, 2014, she turned to the federal Health Insurance Marketplace to find insurance that would meet her needs.

But instead of finding available policies, the self-employed Barnesville resident found headaches."I started trying to use the healthcare.gov website when it was supposed to be launched on Oct. 1," Price said.She explained that the website prompted her to create a username and password, as well as security questions, but after that, everything froze."In about a dozen attempts, I could not get past this (the login) page," she said, adding that she considers herself to be very computer savvy. "And after the first time, I had problems even entering the website as a returning user. I had to reset the 'special questions' again and reset the password. And then again, without fail, all progress would stop and I'd be back to the website 'is no longer responding.'"This problem has only been the tip of the iceberg that Price, as well as millions of Americans across 36 states are experiencing with trying to get health insurance coverage under the upcoming Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare, before the March 31, 2014, deadline. Americans in the remaining 14 states are using state-based exchanges and are not having the same problems.Price has spent about 12 hours attempting to access healthcare.gov and has not successfully found a way to purchase insurance through the site that meets the federal government's requirements."I am worried about being able to find health care at all," she said. "The clock is ticking for me and so many other people. So then what? If you're unable to make the Marketplace work, you'll pay a fine because you don't have health care?"I'm frustrated. Remember (in October) when that woman tried to drive her car through the barricades at the White House? I thought to myself, I bet she had been shopping for health care through the Marketplace, and simply lost her ability to reason."Healthcare.govThe Health Insurance Marketplace website at first glance appears to be the answer to all your insurance questions.But once people begin to dig deeper into the site, they find that it is riddled with problems."It's awful," Price said. "If you don't have health problems before attempting to use the site, you will soon have blood pressure issues."In Pennsylvania, if you try to apply for health insurance, you currently cannot get through the website.Joseph A. Pilla, president of ETA Benefits Group in Nesquehoning, explained that people looking for policies currently cannot find them easily using the site.Through his own experiences with preparing to answer questions for customers looking for insurance, he found that if you apply online, the application gets sent to the government and "someone will get back to you."He pointed out that there is local help through insurance brokers who could answer questions, but no where on the healthcare.gov website shows people where they could go locally for help. When searching the Lehighton zip code, the closest places were Allentown, Wilkes-Barre and Berwick.In fact the site was down all of last Wednesday through Thursday morning; as well as a 90-minute outage on Monday afternoon for unknown reasons. A banner on the website in recent days says the government has been taking the online application offline from 1-5 a.m. daily "while we make improvements."A message prompted users "in a hurry," to call the Marketplace call center and speak with one of the trained representatives.Price, in her frustration, called and spoke with a representative."As we started the process, I asked the woman how long it would take and she said from 45 minutes to an hour," she said. "I didn't have that block of time available."Price added that when she asked the representative specific questions about Pennsylvania, she couldn't provide "unscripted" answers about the policies.She was able to complete an application last Friday but it took her 2-1/2 hours to do so and she still isn't covered."You'd think, ah, big sigh of relief," Price said via email. "No. I was told I should enroll by Dec. 15 to be covered by Jan. 1, which is when my current plan runs out. And then I was told that it will take from four to six weeks to receive the information. But, I said, in six weeks I'll be right around that Dec. 15 deadline."The answer (from the representative helping Price): 'That's the best we can do, because many people are applying and things are backed up.'"Navigating the siteWhen the site isn't down, users should be able to create an account and then must "verify" their identify before being able to continue to the application.Pilla said he signed up and began the application to see where the site took him next.The application process took him about 30 minutes to complete.He then tried to log in later and his completed application had disappeared.He was told by the live chat representative that he would have to call to see if it can be located.Once the application is complete, the website states that users can "get plan information in your area."Even though Pilla filled out the application, every time he searched for plan premiums, he was told "0 plans" were available.The site does have a significant amount of information regarding how it should work, including a "one-page guide to the Health Insurance Marketplace."According to the page, it states a person in search of insurance should be able to see if they qualify for private health insurance plans, Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, and government subsidies to help pay the premiums.Other problems surfacingIn addition to the inability to successfully purchase insurance through the site, other problems with the website have been surfacing.According to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press and Washington Post recently, a high level security flaw was just resolved last week, even though it had been known since before the site launched.The Washington Post reported the memo "warned that in the days leading up to the launch (of healthcare.gov), the system hadn't been sufficiently tested, 'exposing a level of uncertainty that can be deemed high risk.'"The Post reported the security flaw was that it put user data at risk of being hacked, even though the government stated that personal data was "safe."The problem was discovered by Ben Simo, an Arizona-based security researcher.Simo said that the site allowed hackers to guess usernames, which the system confirmed as existing. He then reported that there was a way of "tricking the system's password-reset mechanism" into giving up the user's email address unencrypted."The problem, reported to the government by Simo before the launch, was not resolved until Oct. 25.In addition, Julie Bataille, director of communications for the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, said, "We have found both hardware and software issues that we must address as part of our improvements."Is help available?As the days tick down in the open enrollment period for the Health Insurance Marketplace, questions about whether Americans need to use healthcare.gov to be able to also get the government subsidy have surfaced.Pilla has seen conflicting reports on whether he can help consumers by going through private providers instead of healthcare.gov.At the time of the interview, he said he was told that anyone who would like to possibly qualify for the government subsidy, which is dependent on family size and household income, must go through healthcare.gov.But, according to The New York Times late last week, "Web-based brokers like eHealth are supposed to be able to help consumers enroll in subsidy-eligible plans by connecting to the federal marketplace to verify the consumer's income."It isn't happening yet because the company is "still testing the system.," according to the article.Price said that up until now she hasn't been able to get quotes for insurance coverage through the federal government website, but has been able to find quotes from other providers through their sites."I'm self employed and feel I may qualify for a subsidy. But it's not clear if you can get a subsidy if you obtain insurance on your own, instead of wading through the 'marketplace' site and choosing one of the participating carriers," she said. "For example, I'm a member of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau and may shop there. I have done some shopping on my own, but so far, it's been distressing. The only monthly premiums I can find which are affordable have a deductible of $5,000. My current policy was a $2,000 deductible."So according to my findings so far, I'll pay out about $4,000 in premiums, and if I should need insurance other than preventive care, I could potentially shell out $9,000 in 2014 for health care. This is the Ridiculously Unaffordable Health Care Act."