Applicants that signed on within the first few days were unable to verify their identity through the Experian identification process due to the heavy load on the system.  The identity verification would fail, and the account would be forever locked out from trying again.  The system would then ask the applicant to upload documents for manual verification by an associate, however, because the verification failed unceremoniously, the account would not be marked for manual verification.  Users can upload their identification endlessly, and an associate that would verify their identity would never receive the verification request.

This article serves to detail a work around for users attempting to enroll in the healthcare exchange that have run into this issue.  It will only work for those users that had a system failure on previous attempts to complete the identity verification process and are in a locked-out state.

After spending some time on the system, here is an easy fix.  It will require a web browser with a script debugging console.  The workaround steps that I have outlined below user Firefox with the Firebug add-on, however this fix will also work with the Internet Explorer or Chrome debugging console, accessed by pressing F12.  The work-around for this bug will require some rudimentary HTML and javascript knowledge.

Here are the steps a user can follow in order to force the system to allow them to resubmit their verification:

1) Log On to your account on http://healthcare.gov

2) Copy and paste the following url into the address bar of the browser:

https://www.healthcare.gov/marketplace/auth/global/en_US/myAccount?from=myProfile#IDProofingGetStarted

3) Using the web browser debugging tool, in the HTML section, search for the term “idProofingContactInfo”.  The debugging console should find a div tag with that ID.

4) In the idProofingContactInfo div tag, delete the style attribute “display:none”, this will display the id verification contact info questions

5) In the script debugging panel, do a search for the term “goToIDProofIdentityQuestions”.  This should take you to a script function that handles the click event when you click the “Continue” button from the Id Verification Contact Info  screen.

6) Place a debug breakpoint at the line “if(eidmAttemps === 2 && farsAttempts < 2)”

7) Click the “Continue” button on the Id Verification Contact Info Screen, this should result in the breakpoint being activated

8) When the breakpoint is active, you will see the variables eidmAttemps and farsAttempts in the debugger’s Watch window.  Set the values for both those variables to 0

9) Hit F8.  This will process the questions for the page the way they should have been processed had the system worked correctly from the start.  From here you should be able to complete the identity verification process without any additional steps.

Disclaimer:  The steps listed are only a work-around for a bug in the system.  I accept no responsibility for any attempts to use this information for malicious purposes.  The intent of this work-around is for the sole purpose of helping those who are unable to complete identity verification due to the bug in the system.