The Affordable Care Act is Coming Home to Roost

[TheMadCap]

So what's the Dems end game here?

 

I understand that some Dem senators have proposed a "if you like your health insurance you can keep it" bill, as have some Republicans. So they delay it, sY we are trying to fix it and still come out on top? Does Clinton and the rest of the Dems do what they should do to survive and throw Obama under the bus for the good of the party? Will Obama do the right thing for the party and go under the bus, or will he be too arrogant to go down quietly?

 

If the GOP fight against the Dems trying to delay their way past the 2014 mid terms, do they pay the high political price?

[Koko78]

So what's the Dems end game here?

 

I understand that some Dem senators have proposed a "if you like your health insurance you can keep it" bill, as have some Republicans. So they delay it, sY we are trying to fix it and still come out on top? Does Clinton and the rest of the Dems do what they should do to survive and throw Obama under the bus for the good of the party? Will Obama do the right thing for the party and go under the bus, or will he be too arrogant to go down quietly?

 

If the GOP fight against the Dems trying to delay their way past the 2014 mid terms, do they pay the high political price?

 

Their first priority is to survive the mid-term elections. They're going to do everything they can to delay as many of the Obamacare mandates as possible until mid-November, and they will do everything they can to delay release of the 2015 rates until after the elections.

 

Then once everyone is pissed off that they got lied to and screwed yet again, they will throw Obama under the bus and promote Hillary as the one who can fix Obamacare. It will be irrelevant whether or not Obama objects to being thrown under the bus; he'll be marginalized as a lame duck.

[OCinBuffalo]

Then they went WAY the hell out of their way disassociate it with the rest of their sites. It's almost like they set it up as a deniable shell company.

 

Weird.

Dude, these are the same people, or if not, the same sort of people who oversaw heatlhcare.gov.

 

If it is this CO organization, and frankly, I have been getting lots of fakes of these adds in my fun email = troll alert. It's anybody's guess which are fake and real a this point, because they ALL look hilariously stupid to me. Anyway, if it it genuine, what's so shocking about you being able to penetrate their "super secret hiding the source of these ads" plan?

 

The scariest part: I am pretty sure we are going to find that the security model in Obamacare follows this same "they'll never find it" dingbat approach.

 

I would attack all of these sites using the laundry list of standard hacks, merely to prove the point that they haven't done the job. But, they would lock me up and throw away the key. Look at what they did to the Benghazi video guy.

 

The only way I know of to do it, and not get easily caught, requires resources and time I don't have.

[B-Man]

 

The ObamaCare Dozen: The Democrats who voted for the debacle are now scrambling for cover.

The torrents of Affordable Care Act monsoon season aren't letting up, so Democrats are scrambling to help the victims: namely, their own careers. The Senators up for re-election in competitive states in 2014 are starting to panic, though they still aren't offering solutions for anything other than their own growing political jeopardy.

Fifteen Senate Democrats plus Colorado's Michael Bennet who chairs the Senatorial Campaign Committee sat down at the White House Wednesday, and they want all and sundry to know that they let President Obama have it. Alaska's Mark Begich put out a statement saying he chewed out the big cheese for "absolutely unacceptable" mismanagement and "an understandable crisis in confidence." He must have drafted it in advance.

{snip}

The Shaheen and Landrieu proposals are merely ploys for these Democrats to distance themselves from ObamaCare while still embracing it. But they can't have it both ways. Either they can vote to take down the whole regulate-subsidize-mandate apparatus for a year and propose major reforms to prevent a reprise of the last six weeks. Or else they will be enablers of the current and future disruptions, cancellations and limited health choices.

No doubt the ObamaCare Dozen noticed the Virginia Governor's race, which revealed that even presumably safe Democrats could be vulnerable on health care if Republicans can field decent candidates. As flawed and out-fundraised as GOP candidate Ken Cuccinelli was, he closed a huge gap in the polls by relentlessly belting ObamaCare in the final stretch.

Exit polls report that only 46% of the Virginia public supports ObamaCare, while 53% were opposed, 41% strongly opposed. Mr. Cuccinelli pulled 89% of those opposed. In 2014, Mr. Udall, Mr. Merkley and Virginia's Mark Warner might not be as fortunate as Terry McAuliffe.

The ObamaCare Dozen are receiving an overdue education in the damaging consequences of the bill they supported, all of which were predicted by critics in 2010. Any one of these Senators could have prevented the current madness by voting no. And now the President they empowered to govern from the ideological left has rejected even their de minimis fixes and is promising to "grind it out" even if the problems get worse. These Senators deserve to be held accountable at the ballot box.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303763804579183713385661566

[IDBillzFan]

And now for something that will totally surprise everyone: Obamacare website unlikely to be working by end of month.

 

Gee...never saw that coming.

[Nanker]

Dudes, I haven't had time, but my ad goes something like this(imagine some used-up road whore in the picture):

 

"Suzy's been a stripper for 15 years, doing coke, partying hard and smoking...everything. Man what a fun time it's been. She's lived her life wild and free, and damn it was right for her.

 

Now she's got diabetes, hepatitus C, no useful life or job skills whatsoever, and dude, she really needs health care! When she gets off work it's straight to the meth pipe, so she'll probably have even more health problems soon! Hey the party never ends, for the free!

 

That's right, man, you're a partying kind of guy, right? Well, here's your chance to party hard and rock some Obamacare. Hey, don't be sad, keep the party going, sign up Healthcare.gov, and when you do, think of the good feeling you'll have. You'll know that if Suzy here gets knocked up for the 3rd time by a different guy, because she can't afford the rock, and has to pay the hard way, her new problems, AIDS, and kid with AIDS, will be covered, and it's all thanks to you!

 

And that's cool, right?

 

Thanks Obamacare!"

Now that the series is finally over, you can probably get Wendy to be your model. Looks like you could start with this:

[TheMadCap]

Just got it straight from the company CEO (we are a Fortune 500). Our health plan meets the requirements of the law (good), but since it is what is considered a "Cadillac Plan" by Washington, IF the law takes effect as written, two years from now the excise tax on these types of plans are 40% of the total cost.

 

To cover as many employees as we have, it seems HIGHLY unlikely that even we can or would be willing to eat a 40% increase. So long story short, if the law remains unchanged, it's likely that we will have to join the exchange in two years.

 

Since there seems to be no way to make this law work unless most Americans are enrolled, I have to conclude that this was by design...

[B-Man]

When Nudge Comes To Shove

 

Obamacare is simply old-fashioned social engineering dressed in trendy new clothing

— and as such, it is destined to fail.

by Lee Harris

 

Today, the phrase “social engineering” has fallen into disgrace. Yet the policy of social engineering, the idea of which goes back to the time of Plato, is still with us today, most conspicuously in the Affordable Care Act (more popularly known as Obamacare). Within the first few weeks of its rollout, Obamacare began to show the telltale signs of social engineering: nothing worked the way it was originally planned. Soon the words “debacle” and “fiasco” were being routinely employed by the mainstream media to describe Obamacare’s first dismal month — the same words that have been so appropriately applied to the ill-fated social engineering ventures of the past.

 

Those who remain optimistic that Obamacare will eventually turn around fail to realize that early glitches are not a passing phase, nor mere growing pains on the path toward progress: they are classical symptoms of an experiment in social engineering in the process of falling to pieces.

 

To understand the significance of the charge that Obamacare is an experiment in social engineering, we must go back and examine why the very term “social engineering” has been so carefully avoided both by Obamacare advocates as well as more neutral observers in the mainstream media.

 

{snip}

 

With the rollout of Obamacare, the debate over the merits of libertarian paternalism ceased to be purely abstract. Obamacare was the first large-scale attempt to implement the principles of libertarian paternalism that, as its architects assured us, would make us all healthier, wealthier, and happier. Prior to the rollout, Obamacare’s architects were only able to present their designs in the form of abstract blueprints — blueprints which looked just as beautiful and elegant on paper as the collective farm movement had looked to its Soviet designers. Mandates would nudge the uninsured to buy health insurance. Since many of those who were uninsured were the young and healthy, this would allow insurance companies to lower costs for the old and sick. Federal subsidies would make health care cheaper for those less able to afford it. If all went according to plan, everyone would benefit and no one would lose.

 

Yet, like all schemes of social engineering, the blueprint for Obamacare was strikingly like one of the bizarrely complicated machines imagined by the great cartoonist Rube Goldberg, where a simple effect, like opening a bottle, was achieved only after a maddeningly roundabout series of oddball mechanical actions, where something could always go wrong, but miraculously never did.

 

 

 

http://www.american....-comes-to-shove

 

 

 

[IDBillzFan]

Democratic frustration boils over.

 

Here's my favorite nugget:

 

“Why can’t we call people who know how to do these things, who do it for corporate America, and say, ‘We have a website, fix it,’” said Rep. José E. Serrano, D-N.Y. “Maybe I’m being simplistic, but can’t we call Bill Gates up and say, ‘Take care of this?’ Or go to a college dorm and say, ‘You guys, you invented Yahoo, can you take care of this?’

 

Way to represent, NY!!!

[3rdnlng]

Democratic frustration boils over.

 

Here's my favorite nugget:

 

 

 

Way to represent, NY!!!

 

From your link:

 

"The caucus meeting with Simas occurred two days before the House is scheduled to vote on legislation, sponsored by Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., that would grandfather in health insurance policies that have been abruptly canceled for millions of Americans.

House Democratic leaders are united in their opposition to the legislation, calling it the 46th Republican vote to undermine the health care law.

The White House is also against the bill, a position Simas reiterated at the caucus meeting, according to Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio.

“Mr. Upton’s bill, in their opinion, would bifurcate the insurance market and allow for substandard plans to be offered, and so they were talking about the ultimate impact of voting for it, that in fact it would allow plans that had very high deductibles, very low coverage … to not be covered,” Kaptur told reporters outside the room.

But a sizable portion of Democrats could defect and vote “yes,” worried for the political implications of a “no” vote and for the optics of voting against a bill that, on its surface, simply makes good a pledge they made to their constituents."

 

Dems are caught between a rock and a hard place. They vote "yes" on the bill and Obamacare is done. They vote "no" and they are telling their constituents that they lied to them. This is what happens when you use duplicity to pass a bill.

Edited November 13, 2013 by 3rdnlng

[boyst]

 

 

From your link:

 

"The caucus meeting with Simas occurred two days before the House is scheduled to vote on legislation, sponsored by Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., that would grandfather in health insurance policies that have been abruptly canceled for millions of Americans.

House Democratic leaders are united in their opposition to the legislation, calling it the 46th Republican vote to undermine the health care law.

The White House is also against the bill, a position Simas reiterated at the caucus meeting, according to Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio.

“Mr. Upton’s bill, in their opinion, would bifurcate the insurance market and allow for substandard plans to be offered, and so they were talking about the ultimate impact of voting for it, that in fact it would allow plans that had very high deductibles, very low coverage … to not be covered,” Kaptur told reporters outside the room.

But a sizable portion of Democrats could defect and vote “yes,” worried for the political implications of a “no” vote and for the optics of voting against a bill that, on its surface, simply makes good a pledge they made to their constituents."

 

Dems are caught between a rock and a hard place. They vote "yes" on the bill and Obamacare is done. They vote "no" and they are telling their constituents that they lied to them. This is what happens when you use duplicity to pass a bill.

kaptur is a two faced B word. I've met her a dozen times and whatnot. She spent a lot of time in the upper class burbs and no time in the hoods and ghettos of her district.

[OCinBuffalo]

Democratic frustration boils over.

 

Here's my favorite nugget:

 

 

 

Way to represent, NY!!!

The fact that he's asking that question, the way he is literally asking it? That tells you all you need to know about why Ds shouldn't be in charge of something like this.

 

This isn't about resource management. You can't tell me that every single programmer at CGI is a dunce. Adding more programmers, or better ones, may do some things, but it won't solve the whole problem. Throwing the programmers under the bus may feel good, but it solves nothing.

 

This is about "I don't know how to manage consultants". It's also about "I don't know the role of the executive sponsor of a major IT project".

 

But most importantly, this is about: "I don't know how to develop requirements properly, or create sound designs based on those requirements, and, if even if I did, the White House will meddle with both, such that it will make any construction(programming) effort untenable".

 

That part of the effort is 100% about the team of client side people working with the consultants. If you don't get that right, Bill Gates, Yahoo, my guys...none of us matter, because none of us will be able to construct what you've designed. Or, we will, but it will work: exactly how healthcare.gov has worked thus far.

[B-Man]

STEPHEN GREEN ANSWERS THE OBAMACARE QUESTIONS THE WHITE HOUSE WON’T.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well now, doesn't this just say it all: Obamacare girl not a citizen, hasn’t signed up and….wasn’t paid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE HILL: Obama is boxed in by Bill Clinton.

 

 

.

[IDBillzFan]

WH announced it will release enrollment numbers today at 3:30 EST.

 

It's times like these that Twitter is at its best for providing laughs.

[boyst]

WH announced it will release enrollment numbers today at 3:30 EST.

 

It's times like these that Twitter is at its best for providing laughs.

please provide examples by showing us the twats

[IDBillzFan]

please provide examples by showing us the twats

 

I meant after the numbers are released. But Jonah Goldberg had a couple of good ones today, including:

 

Jonah Goldberg ‏@JonahNRO44m

I think it would be awesome if the White House released enrollment number with the Powerball machine. "The first number is ...zero."

[IDBillzFan]

106,000 signed up...and of that number, 27,000 used the federal website.

 

That's impressive. Keep in mind, these include people who have a plan in their shopping cart, but haven't bought it yet. Remind me a lot of when the WH tried to explain the number of jobs the stimulus "created and saved."

 

Top 5 exchanges:

 

1) CA 35k

2) feds 27k

3) NY 16k

4) WA 7k

5) KY! 5.6

Edited November 13, 2013 by LABillzFan

[B-Man]

You will note about the announcement, she’s doing this on a conference call, not in front of the cameras, presumably to minimize the embarrassment.

 

106,185..................

 

To put that another way, over the 31 days of October, each of the 36 states served by Healthcare.gov managed to enroll … 24 people per day. Not surprisingly, the federal welfare component of ObamaCare, which doesn’t rely on stone-age technology, did much better:

[TheMadCap]

106,000 signed up...and of that number, 27,000 used the federal website.

 

That's impressive. Keep in mind, these include people who have a plan in their shopping cart, but haven't bought it yet. Remind me a lot of when the WH tried to explain the number of jobs the stimulus "created and saved."

 

Top 5 exchanges:

 

1) CA 35k

2) feds 27k

3) NY 16k

4) WA 7k

5) KY! 5.6

 

That's actually more than I thought it would be...

[3rdnlng]

That's actually more than I thought it would be...

 

Remember these people haven't actually paid for it yet. Somewhere I saw a percentage of people who actually follow through and pay are like 30% or so. I don't remember the exact figure but I remember thinking that the vast majority backs off.