The Affordable Care Act is Coming Home to Roost

[Nanker]

Obama just needs to declare victory and ignore all the bitching. After all, Obamacare has saved thousands, possibly millions of lives already.

"Yes, we initially wanted single payer, and we had to compromise back in 2009 for the Affordable Care Act. But, it is a damn good piece of legislation that has already saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives. So, let us not give up now.

And please don’t tell me this about people whose healthcare was canceled…because that healthcare is predatory and it is unconscionable that we would allow anyone in this country to own such policies."

[IDBillzFan]

I should add that the only way the GOP was voting for Obamacare was if they 'called' it an affordable act, but insisted it wasn't affordable at all. Reid and Pelosi agreed, the GOP voted for ACA, and now, today, you get this....

 

Sweeping differences in health care exchange pricing among states and counties is leading to sticker shock for some middle-class consumers and others who aren't eligible for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

 

The average prices for the most popular plans are twice as high in the most expensive states as those with the lowest average prices, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data for 34 states using the federal health insurance exchange.

[B-Man]

Sticker Shock and the Obamacare Website

by Grace Marie Turner

 

The Obama administration appears to be caught in yet another bind over the HealthCare.gov website. One of the site’s functions that actually worked well in testing was shut down days before the October 1 launch. CNN reports on internal administration e-mails:

When the troubled federal health care website came online, the key “Anonymous Shopper” function was nowhere to be found — even though it passed a key test almost two weeks before HealthCare.gov launched.

That successful test, noted in documents obtained by CNN and confirmed by a source close to the project, contradicts testimony from an Obama administration official overseeing HealthCare.gov, who told lawmakers earlier this month the function was scrapped because it “failed miserably” before the October 1 launch.

 

Like much of the HealthCare.gov rollout, the subject has become political fodder for Republicans, who claim the decision to nix the anonymous shopper was made by administration officials worried it would produce rate estimates so high they would deter potential enrollees.

 

Someone made a decision in mid-September to block the “shopper” feature on the website, a decision that likely contributed to the launch problems. Anyone visiting the site had to first enter a battery of personal information to determine whether and how much of a subsidy they might be eligible to receive. Then they would see only the subsidized price, not the full sticker price.

 

Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute and I wrote here and here about the growing evidence that the administration feared having millions of people see the full sticker price of the health policies available in the exchanges. That meant that everyone visiting the site, even out of curiosity, had to enter a battery of personal information first. The system was not set up to handle such massive traffic and crashed.

 

CNN says that the window-shopping feature, which required visitors to enter only minimal data, “was turned off before HealthCare.gov launched and is still unavailable to users.”

 

 

Keep reading this post . . .

[4merper4mer]

How would silicone implants help a male with breast feeding?

 

 

 

How is some dude going to nurse a kid without boobs? Gregg Williams maybe but most dudes, no.

Edited November 22, 2013 by 4merper4mer

[IDBillzFan]

[Nanker]

 

Nancy, that's the definition of a stool sample.

[Koko78]

Actually, Obamacare actually was supposed to be about care, but the Republicans said they'd never vote for it if it included care, so Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi took care out of the bill and made it just about insurance, and that got them the GOP votes they needed to pass the bill.

 

True story.

 

Damn that obstructionist GOP!

[DC Tom]

In the midst of all this current fiasco, let's not lose sight of the fact that the ACA also:

1) because it was so carelessly designed, doesn't provide subsidies for family coverage, which lack (family coverage) it was specifically supposed to address, and

2) Has a definition of "Cadillac plans" based on a defined premium value, while premiums should be expected to increase every year (via inflation if nothing else, and unless the ACA actually does reduce health insurance costs - which so far it shows no signs of doing). Which means, as time goes on, more and more people with good insurance will lose their insurance and be forced on to federally-mandated programs.

 

 

This is a really, really, really, spectacularly great law.

[Doc]

Well now that the Senate only requires a simple majority, it will be easier to repeat this POS when the Senate turns Repub in the next election and Christie becomes prez.

 

Thanks Senate Dems.

[OCinBuffalo]

In States that determined to make it work, it is working. I empathize with people in need who live in States where their Conservative representation chose to make a point, and faulty one in my opinion, rather than taking a run at making this work for their State. Rather ironic considering that Conservatives value States Rights, and liberals are more comfortbale with Central Planning, that the result has been just the opposite.

Again, we have to have yet another discussion on use the the word "working". "Working", as in "working as designed"? or "Working as in "working, from in a practical sense" = working...to F everything up?

 

The only ironic thing here: in your quest, as an administrator-type, to finally get everybody who comes through the door to pay you something, you've only succeeded in having less doctors available in the funnel...to move less people through your doors, and....surprise! Most of these are the newly Medicaided...which means you now get slave wages for 40-50% of your day's care output, but ALL of it costs: the same.

 

It all adds up to you having less aggregate revenue, compared to exponentially increased cost. But hey! At least somebody is paying...something, right? Idiocy.

 

You could have just learned to accept 10% freebies, and 90% full pay. But, you had to have your way: and now you get the opposite of what you intended. That's what you get for going to the Ds for this. You should have gone to the Rs. They know about making deadbeats pay their bills. The Ds are going to make you pay the deadbeat's bill.

 

Nice job Mr. Administrator: you just F'ed over your hospital using a half-assed solution to a short-term problem, that creates a long-term problem that is 5x the size.

 

I go where I am needed most. Based on the "thinking" on display here, does anyone still wonder..why health care?...

I am not making excuses for the website rollout, I don't know anything about computer systems, but the deliver has been awful.

Given your posts here, I'd say you don't know much about business processes, business rules, or business process re-engineering either. You may know how to manage a process, but not how to fix it. You may be able to drive, but you can't design or fix a car.

 

If you did, you'd have understood that the fix to "the emergency room problem"...wasn't a fix at all, and, in fact was a sucker's fix.

I blame the President that he was not more engaged in this rollout so that would be operational and funcational day one.. if it were my legacy on the line, on my signature legislative achevement, you best best it would be not only functional, but easy to use with a big red bow on it.

Yeah, it's called competence. You're a manger. So, you know what delivering on a schedule looks like. You'd even include a "bow". You know what? So would the rest of us. It's called: being competent.

That being said, I do believe at the end of the day people will get covered and this law will be a success, much to the chagrin of conservatives...

Again, this is wishcasting. You don't "believe" this. You wish it was so. You have no evidence that any of this will be the case, so how exactly do you "believe" it? No. You wish this was true. I wish I won the lottery. I wish the Bills would win the SB this year.

 

Or, I suppose you could "believe" in Fairy Godmothers who grant wishes, and, while you were at it, "believe" that people would get covered, and the law....

If it does not last, does not make it, I do hope States who have the Exchanges in place and working will be able to adopt the ACA reforms for their State... I will just always live in a State that has the reforms i place... I can live wiht that.

IF your state wants to be willfully stupid, that's fine. In fact, whether it is, or is not stupid, works, does or doesn't get every Colorado D voted out of office for the next 20 years?

 

None of my business. All of yours.

 

I'll thank you in advance for treating my business with the same respect I've just treated yours, and stay the F out of how I provide health care for my group, in many states, none of which are Colorado.

*** and where you as outraged prior to 2008 when a kid with Kidney failure was dropped from insurance coverage, or his his lifetime limit, or his parent did have a job and couldn't get insurance after COBRA ran out. I assume you did, right?

Ha! Boy are you talking to the wrong consultant.

 

First, let me correct the date: 1998. Don't you even think about lecturing me about insurance companies. I've lived it, 2 of them, for 18 months. This isn't something I read online somewhere.

 

You want details? When have I ever been short on details?

Edited November 23, 2013 by OCinBuffalo

[OCinBuffalo]

It won't matter if the benefit election period is ten days past the government election. These !@#$tards don't realize that people get their benefit choices communicated to them about a month in advance? I know they're out of touch with the average American worker, but this is hilarious. Companies aren't going to hold off communicating what they're planning on offering their employees and then spring it like a flashing pervert would his schlong on an unsuspecting school girl once the Dems are safely back in office. What a bunch of !@#$ing azzholes if they think that one's going to work.

But, why, given their obvious deficit in management abilities, do you think, they don't think it will work?

 

I don't see this as unexpected at all. In fact this is right in line with what I've been saying: they have a psychological dysfunction that prevents them from perceiving the world as it is. Or, perhaps they just don't have any real world experience to guide their perception?

 

I've never worked at a place, and my outfit would never leave any of this to chance a month ahead of time = right after the election. We tell you exactly what's going to happen, 6 months before, and it's all solved 3 months before. We can't afford distracted brains. Period. So, all this does?

 

We'll have our answer out the door 5 months before the election, instead of 6. I fail to see how that helps Ds politically. If they delay 3 months, then, we'll have our answer out 3 months before he election.

 

I doubt most principals are going to be doing anything much different. That's what will happen, in the real world. They seem unable to perceive that.

[B-Man]

 

The Fundamental Dishonesty of Obama and Obamacare

 

It’s hard to overstate how disconcerting the news about our government has been since Obamacare debuted on October 1st.

The HealthCare.gov rollout for consumers, utterly disastrous and demoralizing as it has been, is in the grand scheme a far-down-the-list annoyance. Its most beneficial result has been to teach Americans with their eyes even remotely open that our government has devolved to the point where it can’t carry out even the simplest of tasks.

 

Over a long weekend followed by some supplemental tweaking, the three guys who built the working Affordable Care Act policy search web site known as TheHealthSherpa.com for free accomplished what Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s assembled contractors and bureaucrats couldn’t get done with a 42-month head start and hundreds of millions of dollars.

 

Meanwhile, Team Sebelius’s work has been extraordinarily shoddy. Four IT experts told a congressional hearing this week that the currently not secure web site won’t be secure by the government’s self-imposed but increasingly squishy November 30 deadline. You would think in these circumstances that no one with a brain would suggest that users visit HealthCare.gov and attempt to enroll. You would be wrong. On Wednesday, Sebelius said that she “feels like it’s safe.” She “knows” it is not. A private firm executive allowing this travesty to continue for 50 days would be in jail, and his or her company would be shut down permanently.

 

 

 

CNN analysis: No Obamacare subsidy for some low-income Americans

 

Washington (CNN) -- One of the basic tenets of Obamacare is that the government will help lower-income Americans -- anyone making less than about $45,900 a year -- pay for the health insurance everyone is now mandated to have.

But a CNN analysis shows that in the largest city in nearly every state, many low-income younger Americans won't get any subsidy at all. Administration officials said the reason so many Americans won't receive a subsidy is that the cost of insurance is lower than the government initially expected. Subsidies are calculated using a complicated formula based on the cost of insurance premiums, which can vary drastically from state to state, and even county to county.

 

 

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/22/politics/obamacare-subsidies/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

[B-Man]

Cry ‘Havoc!’ and Let Slip the Dogs...

By Mark Steyn

 

This is either a cute doggie story, or a disturbing glimpse into the poor security of the Obamacare exchanges:

A Fort Collins, Colorado man got the surprise of his life after he signed up for an Obamacare account last month: a congratulatory letter from the health care exchange addressed to his dog…

 

He applied for coverage through Connect for Health Colorado, but chose to do it over the phone instead of on the marketplace’s website. And when the phone bank operator asked him for a series of security questions, one of his answers was ‘Baxter,’ his pooch’s name.

 

A few days later, he got a letter back from Connect for Health beginning “Dear Baxter…”

 

This is an ingenious move on the Administration’s part. With only 26,794 human beings signed up for Obamacare, it should be easy to make the 7,000,000 enrollment target by enrolling 6,973,206 dogs. Of course, they’ll need to sign up enough young, fit, scampering pups to cover the costs of all the aged, lame, mangy old pooches with pre-existing conditions.

 

 

PS Just don’t tell Baxter the President’s working on getting it “fixed.”

 

 

 

‘Never in Our Adult Lives Have We Required Assistance from the Government’

by Rich Lowry

 

Something the Left can’t fathom when it touts the subsidies in Obamacare is that some people would prefer to fend for themselves, so they don’t feel anyone has done them a great favor by forcing them off their prior plans and onto government, or government-subsidized, insurance.

 

The op-ed yesterday in the Wall Street Journal by Nicole Hopkins on her mom getting forced into Medicaid hit on this point:

Before

ObamaCare

, Medicaid was one option. Not the option. Before this, she had never been, in effect, ordered to take a handout. Now she has been forced to join the government-reliant poor, though she would prefer to contribute her two mites. The authorities behind “affordable care” had erased her right to calculate what she was willing to spend to preserve her dignity — to determine what she thinks is affordable.

 

So does a piece in National Journal on Obamacare and redistribution:

Mark Knapp, who owns a toolmaking and sharpening business in Fairbanks, Alaska, is one of those white Americans who has always held a jaundiced view of Obamacare — but he recently has been given good reason beyond ideology. He and his wife received a cancellation notice from their insurer, Premera Blue Cross, that informed them the new policy would cost them $1,214 a month, a 62 percent increase from what they were paying. Premera explicitly blamed the Affordable Care Act for the change.

 

.

Edited November 23, 2013 by B-Man

[B-Large]

 

Again, we have to have yet another discussion on use the the word "working". "Working", as in "working as designed"? or "Working as in "working, from in a practical sense" = working...to F everything up?

 

The only ironic thing here: in your quest, as an administrator-type, to finally get everybody who comes through the door to pay you something, you've only succeeded in having less doctors available in the funnel...to move less people through your doors, and....surprise! Most of these are the newly Medicaided...which means you now get slave wages for 40-50% of your day's care output, but ALL of it costs: the same.

 

It all adds up to you having less aggregate revenue, compared to exponentially increased cost. But hey! At least somebody is paying...something, right? Idiocy.

 

You could have just learned to accept 10% freebies, and 90% full pay. But, you had to have your way: and now you get the opposite of what you intended. That's what you get for going to the Ds for this. You should have gone to the Rs. They know about making deadbeats pay their bills. The Ds are going to make you pay the deadbeat's bill.

 

Nice job Mr. Administrator: you just F'ed over your hospital using a half-assed solution to a short-term problem, that creates a long-term problem that is 5x the size.

 

I go where I am needed most. Based on the "thinking" on display here, does anyone still wonder..why health care?...

 

Given your posts here, I'd say you don't know much about business processes, business rules, or business process re-engineering either. You may know how to manage a process, but not how to fix it. You may be able to drive, but you can't design or fix a car.

 

If you did, you'd have understood that the fix to "the emergency room problem"...wasn't a fix at all, and, in fact was a sucker's fix.

 

Yeah, it's called competence. You're a manger. So, you know what delivering on a schedule looks like. You'd even include a "bow". You know what? So would the rest of us. It's called: being competent.

 

Again, this is wishcasting. You don't "believe" this. You wish it was so. You have no evidence that any of this will be the case, so how exactly do you "believe" it? No. You wish this was true. I wish I won the lottery. I wish the Bills would win the SB this year.

 

Or, I suppose you could "believe" in Fairy Godmothers who grant wishes, and, while you were at it, "believe" that people would get covered, and the law....

 

IF your state wants to be willfully stupid, that's fine. In fact, whether it is, or is not stupid, works, does or doesn't get every Colorado D voted out of office for the next 20 years?

 

None of my business. All of yours.

 

I'll thank you in advance for treating my business with the same respect I've just treated yours, and stay the F out of how I provide health care for my group, in many states, none of which are Colorado.

 

Ha! Boy are you talking to the wrong consultant.

 

First, let me correct the date: 1998. Don't you even think about lecturing me about insurance companies. I've lived it, 2 of them, for 18 months. This isn't something I read online somewhere.

 

You want details? When have I ever been short on details?

 

I assume you follow mw through this thread because what I post is reality and factual, and you don't care for that since it threatens your position. I do enjoy the discussion, even if we rarely agree.

[DC Tom]

I assume you follow mw through this thread because what I post is reality and factual, and you don't care for that since it threatens your position. I do enjoy the discussion, even if we rarely agree.

 

Your last post was ALL "hope" and "belief," not reality.

[TakeYouToTasker]

I assume you follow mw through this thread because what I post is reality and factual, and you don't care for that since it threatens your position. I do enjoy the discussion, even if we rarely agree.

...

[B-Man]

Via New York Daily News:

The Obamacare rollout has been a debacle, with delays in the implementation of mandates, technical glitches in the exchanges, cancelled individual policies and more.

 

It’s about to get worse

. The federal judiciary is currently hearing four cases challenging decisions made by the Internal Revenue Service that could soon deliver more major blows to the Affordable Care Act.

 

One such decision extended subsidies provided by Obamacare for lower-income individuals and families (those making up to four times the povery level) to people in the 36 states served by the federally-operated exchange, HealthCare.gov.

 

But the law spells out clearly that such federal subsidies will be granted “through an exchange established by the state” – not that they can be granted by the federal government.

 

 

Keep reading…

 

Indiana is disputing the extension of Obamacare to state and local governments. This could cripple local governments already operating on a shoestring in many cases. But their argument is a good one from a legal point of view.

 

If Obamacare is a tax, as has been found by the SCOTUS, federal government doesn’t have a right to tax state governments.

 

 

.

[B-Man]

JOHN FUND REVISITS THE REPEAL OF THE DISASTROUS 1989 CATASTROPHIC HEALTH CARE ACT:

 

“These people don’t understand what the government is trying to do for them,” said then-chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Dan Rostenkowski in August 1989, after senior citizens angry over a federal health-care law booed him and chased him down a Chicago street. That law was repealed a few months later by a Democratic Congress and a Republican president who had supported it jus the year before.

 

Everything old is new again. We are starting to hear in D.C. that today’s unpopular health-care law might be in real trouble, spelled with a capital T, as The Music Man would put it. . . .

 

Even then, in 2010, some survivors of the Catastrophic Coverage Act debacle were unsure of Obamacare’s staying power. “When I saw this massive thing, I said, ‘Boy, if this is anything like catastrophic, they are going to be in trouble,’” former representative Brian Donnelly, a Massachusetts Democrat, told the New York Times. “It is a very good analogy.”

 

 

 

Let’s hope.

 

 

 

 

 

OOPS: No Grounds for Claim that Obamacare Lowers Healthcare Costs.

 

.

[Nanker]

Now there's low enrollment in Colorado? I read right here that Colorado is a paragon of success wrt the PPACA.

[IDBillzFan]

Now there's low enrollment in Colorado? I read right here that Colorado is a paragon of success wrt the PPACA.

 

Something tells me Hickenlooper's re-election effort is going to be painful.