Sorry, you’re in jail: Access Health CT applicants wrongly considered incarcerated

Some people applying for coverage through the state’s health insurance exchange are coming upon a potentially upsetting glitch: The system informs them they’re incarcerated.

The glitch has affected .5 percent to 1 percent of the exchange’s customers, said James Wadleigh, chief information officer for Access Health CT, the state’s exchange.

That equates to about 100 customers per day who call Access Health’s call center to have the problem addressed through a manual workaround, he said.

Peter Van Loon, Access Health’s chief operating officer, said the problem is in information the exchange gets from the federal data services hub, which is used to verify information about applicants. In some cases, the people reported as incarcerated have never been to prison, while others have been out for 20 years.

“As you can imagine, that generates a lot of emotion with people, especially those that have never been incarcerated, to have us come and say that you’re in jail,” he said.

Wadleigh said exchange staff members are redesigning the system to use data from the state Department of Correction.