The Affordable Care Act is Coming Home to Roost

[IDBillzFan]

Why is the Federal Program so !@#$ed up...

 

Hmmmmm. Let me see. Why would a massive project consistently done successfully by smaller groups be so !@#$ed up when done by the federal governmet? Let me ponder that for a second.

[B-Man]

^{With Obamacare, We Need to Separate Out the Medicaid Numbers}

^{By Charles C W Cooke}

 

^{Over at Conservative Intel, David Freddoso has some vital numbers:}

 

^{Yesterday, The Washington Post suggested that at least 185,000 people have signed up for Obamacare:. That sounds promising for the program even if it’s still well short of the pace needed to meet the goals. And then Oregon has just reported 56,000 enrollments. So isn’t everything going just fine?}

 

^{In fact, no. When you see state enrollment numbers, you have to ask yourself this question:}

^{How many of those people are actually becoming Obamacare private insurance exchange customers, as opposed to people who (1) were always eligible but are just signing up for Medicaid for the first time, and (2) people who are newly eligible for Medicaid under the expanded coverage thresholds in some states?}

 

^{In Oregon, that 56,000 number you’re hearing today is ALL Medicaid.}

^{Their online exchange doesn’t even work yet}

^.

 

^{The state bulked up its Medicaid rolls by targeting food stamp recipients. So great, those folks have some kind of insurance (whether or not a doctor will see them), but it tells us nothing about the private health insurance exchanges — the middle class version of Obamacare — or how they’re going to fare.}

 

^{Something similar is happening in many other states as well.}

^{Freddoso tells similar stories about Minnesota, Washington, California, Wisconsin, and Colorado. Read the rest here.}

 

 

 

.

Edited October 18, 2013 by B-Man

[DC Tom]

My kind of article here: syndicated cartoonist tries to sign up for ACA, and gets his answer.

 

“Error 500: org.opensaml.common.SAMLRuntimeException: Error determining metadata contracts.”

 

It is a REALLY impressive feat of IT engineering to let a system go live with that error even being possible. That's a level of negligence so epic it practically has to be willful.

[/dev/null]

My kind of article here: syndicated cartoonist tries to sign up for ACA, and gets his answer.

 

“Error 500: org.opensaml.common.SAMLRuntimeException: Error determining metadata contracts.”

 

That's just poor database programming. All they had to do was link in with the NSA database and they'd have all the metadata on everyone

[IDBillzFan]

What a mess.This is what happens when you elect as president a person whose knowledge of the real world can fit on a pinhead; he surrounds himself with incompetent yes men like a hole surrounds itself with a donut.

 

What bunker is Henry Chao hiding in, for instance? He's the HHS official in charge of technology for the Affordable Care Act, and in March he said at an insurance lobby conference that his team had given up trying to create "a world-class user experience." With the clock running, Mr. Chao added that his main goal was merely to "just make sure it's not a third-world experience."

 

He didn't succeed. Whatever is below third-world standards would flatter the 36 federally run exchanges as they've started up. But perhaps Mr. Chao or someone else, if not Mrs. Sebelius, can answer even the simple question of how many Americans have managed to enroll for coverage. HHS could easily resolve any confusion but it won't even talk to Democratic allies, friendly reporters and what it calls the insurance industry "stakeholders" that it will need to make ObamaCare work.

 

No doubt a hearing would be a spectacle—with TV cameras on hand—but Mrs. Sebelius can't hide forever. Even pro-entitlement liberals want to know about what went wrong and why, how much if any progress is being made, and whether theObamaCare website Healthcare.gov will be usable in a matter of months—or years.

 

More disclosure might also help HHS preserve a scrap of credibility, given that none of its initial explanations has held up. Right now, no one trusts a word that emerges from Fortress ObamaCare.

Edited October 19, 2013 by LABillzFan

[B-Man]

HUFFINGTON POST: Obamacare Website Failure Threatens Health Coverage For Millions Of Americans.

 

 

 

Related: Sebelius on the Run: The HHS Secretary refuses to testify about ObamaCare’s rollout.

 

She can talk to John Stewart,.......................but no one else

 

 

.

[B-Man]

Doctors prepare for Obamacare race to the bottom

 

Doctors in New York aren’t too sure about signing up the people who somehow make it through the failed internet maze of Obamacare to get on the government health insurance train.

New York doctors are feeling queasy about ObamaCare — and many won’t participate in the new national insurance program because they fear they’ll go broke, The Post has learned.

 

“ObamaCare is going to send me more patients to see and then cut the payments to provide the care — that’s what’s going to happen,” predicted Donald Moore, a primary-care doctor in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. “

I will not accept it

.”

 

Moore claims that President Obama made a big mistake by requiring uninsured residents to obtain medical coverage from for-profit insurers through the ObamaCare health exchanges instead of through public health programs like Medicaid.

Under tremendous pressure to keep costs down and profits up, Moore said he’s concerned that commercial insurers will pay doctors less for patient visits and services than either Medicaid or Medicare.

 

Let’s be fair here… who could possibly have predicted this? A system which is now signing up a fair – if not large – number of high risk, high usage patients on programs where private providers are relying on a ton of healthy, low cost patients paying into the system. What could go wrong? I know you’re shocked, but these plans which are going to offer little to no cost offset to people of still fairly modest means (read: 40K of income or so) may find them willing to pay the initially small penalty and not participate. So the providers in question will rely on being compensated by private insurance companies who suddenly aren’t seeing the promised income boost. And that’s a formula for what?

Despite a much publicized rollout, many other doctors said they haven’t decided whether to become ObamaCare providers, because they haven’t been notified by insurers or the state about ­reimbursement rates.

 

“I have not spoken with anyone who has made a decision to participate in the exchanges. We simply don’t have any information about which we can make a decision,” said Dr. Paul Orloff, president of the New York County Medical Society.

 

“

We have no idea what the reimbursements will be or what the claims-form process will entail

.”

http://hotair.com/ar...-to-the-bottom/

 

 

[/dev/null]

Meanwhile MSNBC's is trying to spin the failure of the ACA's rollout on Republicans

[Chef Jim]

Meanwhile MSNBC's is trying to spin the failure of the ACA's rollout on Republicans

 

And you're surprised at this because......?

[B-Man]

Lol at the media.................

 

 

[TheMadCap]

Meanwhile MSNBC's is trying to spin the failure of the ACA's rollout on Republicans

 

Well of course it's their fault, they haven't done a single thing to fix it!

[IDBillzFan]

That didn't take long.

 

You'd think a partisan shrill like Hillary would point out the GOP or Tea Party if that was her point.

 

But no. We all know who she's talking about when she speaks of a lack of leadership.

 

“I’ve spent four years traveling across the globe, a great honor and privilege to represent all of you,” she said. “I’ve learned even more about what it takes to make the decisions, what it takes to bring people together to build the kind of future that we all want for our children and grandchildren. I’ve seen leaders who are divisive. And I’ve seen leaders who are unifiers. I’ve seen leaders who are exclusive. And I’ve seen leaders who are inclusive.”

 

A few minutes later, Clinton got even more direct in her criticism of current leadership in Washington, D.C., presumably a reference to both how Republicans and Democrats have handled ongoing policy battles.

 

“Now recently in Washington, unfortunately, we’ve seen examples of the wrong kind of leadership,” Clinton said. “When politicians choose scorched earth over common ground, when they operate in what I call the ‘evidence-free zone’ with ideology trumping everything else. We’ve seen that families in Virginia and across the country have felt the consequences, workers furloughed, businesses suffering, children thrown out of Head Start, poor mothers worried they won’t get the help they need to buy formula and food for their babies, that is not the kind of leadership we need in Virginia and America today.”

[DC Tom]

That didn't take long.

 

You'd think a partisan shrill like Hillary would point out the GOP or Tea Party if that was her point.

 

But no. We all know who she's talking about when she speaks of a lack of leadership.

 

 

I think the most likely backlash is "Between a community organizier and teabaggers, it's time to put professionals who know how to lead and govern back in the White House. Hillary Clinton '16!"

 

The opening salvo in her campaign.

[IDBillzFan]

Remember, if you like your health care, you can keep your...no, wait...

 

If you like your doctor, you can keep your...no, wait.

 

How about if you like your president lying out his piehole, you can keep him.

 

Health plans are sending hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters to people who buy their own coverage, frustrating some consumers who want to keep what they have and forcing others to buy more costly policies.

 

The main reason insurers offer is that the policies fall short of what the Affordable Care Act requires starting Jan. 1. Most are ending policies sold after the law passed in March 2010. At least a few are canceling plans sold to people with pre-existing medical conditions.

 

By all accounts, the new policies will offer consumers better coverage, in some cases, for comparable cost -- especially after the inclusion of federal subsidies for those who qualify. The law requires policies sold in the individual market to cover 10 “essential” benefits, such as prescription drugs, mental health treatment and maternity care. In addition, insurers cannot reject people with medical problems or charge them higher prices. The policies must also cap consumers’ annual expenses at levels lower than many plans sold before the new rules.

 

But the cancellation notices, which began arriving in August, have shocked many consumers in light of President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their plans if they liked them.

“I don’t feel like I need to change, but I have to,” said Jeff Learned, a television editor in Los Angeles, who must find a new plan for his teenage daughter, who has a health condition that has required multiple surgeries.

 

I'm sure when Jeff Learned finds a new plan for his daughter, who has had multiple surgeries, the new plan will be just like the one he has. Except for, you know, the ten of thousands he'll have to pay before coverage kicks in.

 

But hey...teabaggerbushtedcruzrumsfeld! Fore!ward!

[Nanker]

Meanwhile birdbrain sits on the sidelines quietly rooting for the ACA to fail so he gets his holy grail - the single payer system, so he can fire 80% of his office staff once the messy paperwork required to deal with a half dozen insurers goes away as a direct result of the fed's super zippy wonderfully omnipotent database-driven direct payment system gets installed. Can't happen too soon for him either. He's itching to have more time to study the markets and try to figure out how to make a real killing so he can retire at 45.

[Doc]

Remember, if you like your health care, you can keep your...no, wait...

 

If you like your doctor, you can keep your...no, wait.

 

How about if you like your president lying out his piehole, you can keep him.

 

 

 

I'm sure when Jeff Learned finds a new plan for his daughter, who has had multiple surgeries, the new plan will be just like the one he has. Except for, you know, the ten of thousands he'll have to pay before coverage kicks in.

 

But hey...teabaggerbushtedcruzrumsfeld! Fore!ward!

Wow, the Dems really stuck it to the insurance co's! So people pay about the same or more than what they were paying, while they pay providers Medicaid rates. Again, good luck finding a provider who takes it.

[B-Man]

Obamacare, Failing Aheadof Schedule

by Ross Douthat

 

THIS is not the column about the Obamacare rollout I expected to write.

 

If you had told me, months ago, that weeks after the health care law’s coverage expansion went into effect I would be writing about the problems its launch had exposed, I would have assumed I’d be writing about rate shock, rising premiums and the disappearance of many cheap insurance plans — basically, all the problems conservatives have worried will make Obamacare a ruinously expensive failure if they play out as we fear they might.

 

I may be writing about those issues soon enough. But for now there is a more pressing subject: The online federal health care exchange, the heart of the Obamacare project, is such a rolling catastrophe that it may end up creating a major policy fiasco immediately rather than eventually.

 

This fiasco has always been a possibility, for reasons inherent in the architecture of the law. When The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn, the most rigorous defender of the entire reform project, wrote up his “five Obamacare anxieties” in May, the first one was structural: The system’s sustainability depends on getting enough healthy people to sign up, he pointed out, and if they don’t then insurers “will have to raise everyone’s premiums,” which “could create what actuaries call a ‘death spiral’: Rising premiums prompt people to drop out, causing premiums to increase

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/opinion/sunday/douthat-obamacare-failing-ahead-of-schedule.html?hp&_r=1&

[Alaska Darin]

http://www.nytimes.c...e.html?hp&_r=1

That's surprising.

 

Sincerely,

No one who's actually worked in the private sector, ever.

[IDBillzFan]

That's surprising.

 

Sincerely,

No one who's actually worked in the private sector, ever.

 

All this mayhem on the launch of Obamacare, and we haven't even gotten to the really juicy part, where reports come out about how easy it was to hack the site and steal the identities of all 10,000 people who actually signed up.

 

It's coming. You don't build a federal website with 10-year-old technology without hackers sitting at their computers, tying a checkerboard napkin around their necks, aligning their silverware and looking at heathcare.gov like an Alabama tourist at the Flamingo Hilton All-You-Can-Eat Buffet.

[Chef Jim]

I've been doing a 31 days of Halloween countdown on Facebook seeing it's our favorite holiday. I've been posting quotes from some of the classic horror writers and I came across this one. I think it fits best here.

 

“Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.”

― Ambrose Bierce

 

Oh and another one:

 

“In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.”

― Ambrose Bierce

Edited October 20, 2013 by Chef Jim