Mission: To keep the doctor who recently saved my life. To do that, I must dump my Healthcare.gov Exchange policy and switch to another, non-Exchange plan. I've chosen to remain with the same company, however, which has treated me well (despite some very confused communications).

Mission status as of this morning: I hold an approved application, but my credit card had not been charged, and so I didn't know whether the replacement policy is in effect. The approval email, received two weeks ago, specifically stated that I should not cancel any existing plans until I have received and reviewed the membership materials for the new one. Efforts to get answers by phone have not been successful, leaving me not knowing whether I now have two policies in effect, just one, or none, or whether I could now see my existing doctors. This is a concern because I am past due in scheduling an appointment for a follow-up to my recent surgeries.

In our last episode: Starting with a phone number set forth in the aforementioned email as the one to call with any questions, I hit the dial pad Monday (the last day of open enrollment) to try to find out what's up with my coverage. Over the course of the next three and a half hours, I spoke to 4 different employees, each of whom assured me I'd reached the wrong department, before transferring me off to the next hapless victim down the line, who also couldn't help me. I disconnected the final call after listening to two and a half hours of toe-tapping hold music. (Or maybe it was finger-drumming hold music.)

Today's task: Try again.

Narrative: Okay, it's getting really, really ridiculous.

Let me say right off the top that I don't blame my insurance company, which I am not naming at this juncture for reasons that should be obvious. This company stood by me in January, authorizing my operation when it could have fought me on it. Change brings confusion, and so it follows that massive change brings massive confusion. Given the broad impact of the Affordable Care Act, it would be surprising only if chaos were not the order of the day right now, on all fronts.

That said, even by those standards, today's round of mirth and merriment scored well above average on the Ridicu-Meter. Now that the deadline for open enrollment has passed, I had hoped today would be a little less busy for employees working the phones. However, I found I could not start my calls where I'd left off. The last woman who'd talked to me on Monday did not give me the number she was dialing before she transferred me to The Toilet Zone. ("Submitted for your approval: a portrait of a man stuck between two worlds, trapped in a place that's neither light nor dark, hot nor cold, high nor low. Picture, if you will, a hard, round, wet land that's neither here nor there, nestled somewhere between existence and non-existence; shadow and substance; and promises and fulfillment. A place we call: The Toilet Zone.") So I had to start again. From the beginning. This time, rather than resort to the number listed on the email, which I now knew to be wrong, I looked up the customer service number indicated on my old membership card, and called that. The phone picked up quickly. After hearing my problem, right away the employee wanted to transfer me to someone else. I stopped her, and explained the joys of my day on Monday. She listened politely, and then checked her computer more closely. But it turned out that she could not see any of my payment information because she worked in the company's Exchange area. To get me help, she would have to transfer me off to a non-Exchange department or section within the company. Reluctantly, I let her do so.

The lady who answered next was extraordinarily helpful. And bless her heart, she really dug into the issue for me. She had to call around to several different people in order to gather information, but she did not transfer me or maroon me again in The Toilet Zone. Finally, she found the answer: my credit card had not been charged, and the new policy was not in effect, because the company was waiting for me to cancel the old one.

Yes, you read it right. After telling me, in writing, not to cancel the old policy, the company had then shelved my application until such time as I did so.

At this point, I think even the late Rod Serling would had rejected this story synopsis as being too bizarre for belief. But at any rate, the woman on the phone (who was, let the record reflect, a consummate professional and a great advocate for me today) told me that the word from the enrollment department was that I needed to contact the government-run Exchange by phone and cancel my existing Exchange policy. She said that, according to the enrollment people, this would result in a cancellation number. She was very specific in saying I should write down that number. Once I cancelled, in theory the government would notify the company, at which point the replacement policy would take effect. She said she expected this to take about a week to play out.

I thanked her, and then politely gave her some summary comments about my recent customer experiences – both good and bad – which she promised to relay up the chain of command.

After taking a break for lunch, I hit the phones again and called the government number she'd given me. After about 35 minutes on hold, a gentleman politely guided me through the cancellation process (as it turns out, I could have done this on line). By the end of the call, I'd succeeded in terminating my Exchange plan. However, I did not get the requested cancellation number. When I asked for it, the man patiently explained that the termination procedure generates no such number.

I swear to you, shortly after hearing this, I found that I had assumed the exact hands-to-face pose as the tortured figure in Edvard Munch's famous painting, "The Scream."

Even so, if all goes well, in about a week I'll get my new membership card, and will be able to proceed with my follow-up treatments, enjoying the services of the internationally-renowned doctor who operated on me successfully the first two times.

So what have we learned here today?

I am in my current situation (and I'm guessing there are tens of thousands, if not millions, of other Americans in the same boat, or in one similar) because of a long string of misinformation, bad advice, incorrect statements, and broken promises. Here is a rundown, with some suggested solutions.

Problem: Within my insurer (I don't know about other companies, but here is an invitation for some enterprising reporter to find out) apparently the Exchange plans are handled very differently from the non-Exchange plans, using different teams of people. This causes massive confusion and raises barriers to communication.

Solution: Shouldn't any employee be able to access any information needed to solve any customer problem? This factor alone accounted for 90% of the runaround I got.

Problem: Before signing up with this company, I verified that my primary care physician was listed on its provider page. I got the web address for that provider page from materials I downloaded from Healthcare.gov. But as it turns out, its list of Exchange policy providers is very different from the non-Exchange providers. The lists do not overlap in every place. I'm not sure they overlap in any place.

Solution: The company should set up a web page listing Exchange providers separately and exclusively. Materials provided by the Healthcare.gov site should lead only to those providers, not to the irrelevant page to which I was directed.

Problem: The offices of both of my doctors – the primary care physician and the specialist – told me verbally, after I explained that I'd just bought an Exchange plan, that my physicians were authorized providers.

Solution: Whenever there is a breakdown in communication, it's likely that more than one party is responsible. But I have to ask: did this insurance company warn its medical providers that patients would ask them whether they are authorized to provide services under the company's Exchange plans? Did it remind doctors that those plans are not the same? Because if it did, those efforts were not effective. A company representative admitted to me in January that there was massive confusion all around on this point, both among patients and providers. I'm also curious to know to what extent, if any, the company recruited its doctors to sign up for those Exchange policies.

Problem: The phone numbers that my insurance company listed on its acceptance email as the ones to call with any questions were incorrect.

Solution: That one's easy. List the correct numbers.

Problem: The email warning me not to cancel my existing policy before receiving my membership materials was exactly the opposite of what I needed to do.

Solution: Equally easy. Don't be sayin' that. Obviously, the company needs to make sure its instructions are accurate.

Problem: When I called the company asking for help, I had to speak to six people and endure a total of about four hours of hold music over a two-day period before finally finding someone who could help me.

Solution: Train your employees and give them the tools they need to communicate with customers and with each other correctly and efficiently.

Problem: Not everyone realizes the Exchanges may not be the only option, or even the best option, for many people. Before launching into all this, I had a vague notion that it would be possible to buy an insurance plan someplace else other than via the Exchange on Healthcare.gov, but I thought the best and most competitive plans would be on the government site. However, for people who don't qualify for a subsidy, there are other potential choices. In my case, according to what both offices eventually told me, no Exchange plan would have allowed me to keep my doctors. I imagine that is true for other people as well.

Solution: Yes, I should have taken steps to be a better-informed consumer. However, I'm not sure the media have done a particularly good job of explaining all this. Nor has the government. There has been the occasional article or story referencing insurance brokers and non-Exchange options. But typically, the coverage tends to focus exclusively on the federal or state exchanges. One news magazine piece I relied on did show how brokers were available to help. But in the example it gave, the broker sat down with the customer only to explain the Exchange options. It would not hurt for the media to broaden the scope of their coverage. Also, when I signed up, I don't recall seeing any items on the Healthcare.gov explainer 1-sheet mentioning other insurance options, suggesting the possibility of working with a broker, or referencing the issue of potentially having to change doctors under a government Exchange plan. None is there now.

And the biggest problem of all: "You can keep your plan. You can keep your doctor." The problem, of course, was that for millions of people, this statement simply was not true. Further, the facts are pretty clear that those who said it, and their supporters, knew at the time, or at very least should have known, that it was false. The Affordable Care Act therefore was passed in a less than forthright way. Not to put too fine a point on it: Obamacare proponents led the American public down a primrose path. This has led to hard feelings and has caused combatants on all sides to become even more entrenched and distrustful of one another. (I've had some personal experience with this effect while discussing the topic with friends on my Facebook page).

Solution: I didn't want the original plan I had last year to be cancelled from underneath me, and I certainly didn't want to have to change doctors. But now that I'm this far down the road, I don't want to simply junk the Affordable Care Act, either. Even so, the current distrustful political atmosphere is not okay. Can it be set right? To start, an apology would be good. I mean a real, sincere one that accepts full, personal responsibility and takes steps to restore trust. Now, only the president can know his own mind. If he did deliberately fib, he should man up and say so. I don't expect that to happen, whether or not he knew at the time that what he was saying was false. But here is what I long to hear President Obama say now: "In the debate over ACA, I said some things that turned out not to be true. In an attempt to focus the debate, I oversimplified. But I knew better. It was poor judgment, and a bad call. I am sincerely sorry. What I should have said is this: 'We are taking steps to grandfather in as many policies as we can. Even so, some of you will be inconvenienced. You might have to change plans. You might have to change doctors. I regret that. But I ask you to accept this sacrifice so that millions of your fellow Americans can have in the future what you have now and will continue to have in the future: affordable health coverage.' That's what I should have said then. I'm saying it now. For some of you, I broke a promise. I hope you will not let your understandable disappointment keep you from closing ranks and moving forward with your fellow citizens, to whom I also made a promise – a promise of a better future."

That statement, or one like it – coupled with sincere efforts to work across party lines, to the fullest extent possible, to fix whatever needs fixing, and also address the parallel problem of out-of-control national spending – would go a long way to set my mind at ease. It might even convince me to vote Democratic in the next election or two.

I'm waiting.