"The Obamacare implosion is worse than you think"

[Amelia]

Troubled HealthCare.gov unlikely to work fully by end of November, as White House vowed - The Washington Post

Software problems with the federal online health insurance marketplace, especially in handling high volumes, are proving so stubborn that the system is unlikely to work fully by the end of the month as the White House has promised, according to an official with knowledge of the project.

The insurance exchange is balking when more than 20,000 to 30,000 people attempt to use it at the same time — about half its intended capacity, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal information. And CGI Federal, the main contractor that built the site, has succeeded in repairing only about six of every 10 of the defects it has addressed so far.

....

 

[Amelia]

Interesting piece by Peggy Noonan.

ObamaCare Is the Story - WSJ



Down near the end she points out that when Democrats accuse Republicans of sabotaging Obamacare, they're admitting that O-care is effed up. They've given up on trying to pretend that it's good and are looking for someone else to blame other than their own bad judgment.

 

[Jroc]

Obama math..

Who counts as an Obamacare enrollee? The Obama administration settles on a definition.

The fight over how to define the new health law’s success is coming down to one question: Who counts as an Obamacare enrollee?

Health insurance plans only count subscribers as enrolled in a health plan once they’ve submited a payment. That is when the carrier sends out a member card and begins paying doctor bills.

When the Obama administration releases health law enrollment figures later this week, though, it will use a more expansive definition. It will count people who have purchased a plan as well as those who have a plan sitting in their online shopping cart but have not yet paid.

“In the data that will be released this week, ‘enrollment’ will measure people who have filled out an application and selected a qualified health plan in the marketplace,” said an administration official, who requested anonymity to frankly describe the methodology.

The disparity in the numbers is likely to further inflame the political fight over the Affordable Care Act. Each side could choose a number to make the case that the health law is making progress or failing miserably.

The administration plans to use this count of enrollees because that's where their interaction with the healthcare.gov site ends, the administration official said. Insurance plans, rather than the federal government, are responsible for collecting the first month's premium.

The shopping cart on healthcare.gov only contains space for one health plan, meaning the consumer must have gotten far enough to settle on a specific option

Who counts as an Obamacare enrollee? The Obama administration settles on a definition.

 

[boedicca]

Obama math..

Who counts as an Obamacare enrollee? The Obama administration settles on a definition.

The fight over how to define the new health law’s success is coming down to one question: Who counts as an Obamacare enrollee?

Health insurance plans only count subscribers as enrolled in a health plan once they’ve submited a payment. That is when the carrier sends out a member card and begins paying doctor bills.

When the Obama administration releases health law enrollment figures later this week, though, it will use a more expansive definition. It will count people who have purchased a plan as well as those who have a plan sitting in their online shopping cart but have not yet paid.

“In the data that will be released this week, ‘enrollment’ will measure people who have filled out an application and selected a qualified health plan in the marketplace,” said an administration official, who requested anonymity to frankly describe the methodology.

The disparity in the numbers is likely to further inflame the political fight over the Affordable Care Act. Each side could choose a number to make the case that the health law is making progress or failing miserably.

The administration plans to use this count of enrollees because that's where their interaction with the healthcare.gov site ends, the administration official said. Insurance plans, rather than the federal government, are responsible for collecting the first month's premium.

The shopping cart on healthcare.gov only contains space for one health plan, meaning the consumer must have gotten far enough to settle on a specific option

Who counts as an Obamacare enrollee? The Obama administration settles on a definition.

The definition is FRAUDULENT. Until somebody actually purchases ObamaCare and pays for it, it's just sitting in a shopping cart. If Amazon did that to inflate its revenue, it would be charged with fraud.

 

[Amelia]

Obama supporter miffed at botched healthcare rollout - latimes.com

Margaret Davis of West L.A. voted for President Obama and appreciates the ideas behind the Affordable Care Act. She agrees that everyone should have access to healthcare and no one should be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

But here's the problem:

She knows firsthand, as the new law of the land rolls clumsily into being, that it's not working out to everyone's advantage.

"I'm a 55-year-old woman in excellent health and have a catastrophic health plan," she wrote recently to Obama and California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. "I am completely happy with my plan. I received notice that the plan is being canceled and that to stay with a "comparable" plan my premiums would increase 88%, or $200 extra per month. To add insult to injury, the plan is INFERIOR to my existing plan."

....

Steve Jakowchik found Davis a deal at Anthem Blue Cross that essentially splits the difference between her current Kaiser plan and the replacement plan. Davis told me she's inclined to go with the Blue Cross deal unless there's a reprieve and people are allowed to keep existing policies.

Jakowchik, meanwhile, told me that among the roughly 100 clients he's assisting, about 30 are getting plans that are more comprehensive, cheaper or both. The other clients are paying anywhere from a little bit more to a lot more for plans that are inferior to what they had, better than what they had or about the same.

The most striking change he's seeing, Jakowchik said, is among clients who can get pretty good deals, but only if they give up access to the doctors and hospitals they now use. Because his practice is on the Westside, he's hearing from clients who aren't happy about losing Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and UCLA Medical Center as hospital options.

....

 

[mudwhistle]

Like I said before..........the GOP was smart to fight Obama over the ACA because it makes it difficult to blame it all on Republicans.

 

[Amelia]

27,000 bought insurance via HealthCare.gov

Just 26,794 of the 106,185 people who selected health insurance last month used the troubled federal exchange site, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Wednesday.

The remaining 79,391 people used the state exchanges to enroll, for a total of 106,185 people enrolled from Oct. 1 to Nov. 2. ....

 

[Amelia]

Like I said before..........the GOP was smart to fight Obama over the ACA because it makes it difficult to blame it all on Republicans.

One article I read today blamed Obama's "If you like it you can keep it" lie on Bill Clinton. ... coz Clinton promised people would lose their insurance but tried to assure them that what they got in exchange would be so much more secure. And that effort failed. So Obama had to lie. Just had to.

 

[Spoonman]

New Healthcare Enrollment Numbers Continue To Amaze - Yahoo Finance

The Affordable Care Act is becoming more and more of a misnomer each day, and its broad appeal is running far less than the White House hoped for. Monumental sign-up delays and website glitches and outages have turned into Congressional hearings. Now we have some new figures showing just how far behind the goals that Obamacare has laid out.

 

[Spoonman]

Democrats scramble to fix Obama's troubled health care law

Democrats scramble to fix Obama's troubled health care law

Panic in the halls of Congress

Democrats aren’t running through the halls of Congress with their hair on fire yet, but anxiety over the possible blowback from the federal health care law is growing by the day.






Related Stories


Obama meets with Senate Dems on health care Associated Press
Obama says he's sorry Americans losing insurance Associated Press
How Democrats Are Trying to Fix, But Not Criticize, Obamacare The Atlantic Wire
Low Obamacare enrollment figures turns up heat on White House Reuters
Bill Clinton Says Health Law May Need to Be Changed The Wall Street Journal

Between the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov and the fact that millions of Americans are poised to lose their current health insurance coverage at the end of the year despite a promise from President Barack Obama that they would be able to keep their plans “no matter what,” congressional Democrats are scrambling to cover their hides before next year’s midterm elections.

 

[Spoonman]

http://news.yahoo.com/video/more-frustration-washington-over-botched-230921684.html

More Frustration in Washington Over the Botched Health Care Website

 

[Amelia]

Why We Lied to Obama - NationalJournal.com

We told him he could be popular. What we meant to say was he could be popular ... if he told the truth.

Americans told President Obama in 2012, "If you like your popularity, you can keep it."

We lied.

Well, at least we didn't tell him the whole truth. What we meant to say was that Obama could keep the support of a majority of Americans unless he broke our trust. Throughout his first term, even as his job-approval rating cycled up and down, one thing remained constant: Polls showed that most Americans trusted Obama.

As they say in Washington, that is no longer operable.

....

 

[Amelia]

Got ObamaCare? Too bad for you | New York Post

Uncle Sam will spend $2.6 trillion on ObamaCare over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. What’s remarkable is how few people this will leave better off.

....

ObamaCare’s most striking feat has been to simultaneously degrade the quality of private insurance, while also making the resulting health plans unaffordable. The plans are so costly that people need government subsidies just to afford the premiums.

....

 

[Amelia]

Matt Miller: What Typhoon Haiyan tells us about Obamacare - The Washington Post

If you feel it’s urgent to help the victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, then deep in your heart you also support Obamacare.

It’s possible you haven’t made this connection yet, so let me explain.

....

As Nixon might have put it, we’re all fans of social insurance now. Obamacare, hyperbole aside, is just a modest new installment at the margins. Mend it all you want. But shame on those who would end it.

Shame on those who have so little faith in their own policies or their constituents that they would lie to their constituents to pass the legislation. Shame on those who expect others to reward the lies and assaults on democracy with cooperation.

When Obama and Democrats admit how wrong they were to lie to their constituents and backdoor clearly unpopular legislation, we can talk.

Robert Reich (and my facebook friend who shared his quote) said that Democrat legislators were showing they had the backbones of banana slugs because they were considering ways of keeping the promises they made to their constituents. How sick is that? How anti-democratic.

 

[GWV5903]

How do you spell failure...

Low enrollment numbers add to political low point for Obama - NBC Politics

...can it get any lower for the Oblammer?

 

[Spoonman]

4 Things the White House Still Hasn?t Told Us About Obamacare - Yahoo Finance

4 Things the White House Still Hasn’t Told Us About Obamacare.

The White House finally released its much anticipated enrollment numbers on Wednesday, revealing that some 106,000 Americans selected insurance policies on the state and federal health exchanges in October, the first month those marketplaces went live.

 

[Spoonman]

No Hope Left for Obamacare?s Website, Techies Say - Yahoo Finance

No Hope Left for Obamacare’s Website, Techies Say.

Nearly a month and a half into the dismal Obamacare rollout, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services communications director Julie Bataille told reporters on Tuesday that CMS has begun emailing at least 275,000 people who had gotten “stuck” attempting to create accounts on the glitch-ridden HealthCare.gov, asking them to come back to the site and “try again.”

 

[Spoonman]

HealthCare.gov won't be fixed by end of the month: report

HealthCare.gov won't be fixed by end of the month: report.By Jay Busbee



Waiting for HealthCare.gov to get fully functional? You might be waiting a little longer.
The Washington Post is reporting that an official with knowledge of the technological demands on the government's online health insurance marketplace says it is not likely the site will be fully functional by the end of the month, as the Obama administration has promised.

 

[Amelia]

Oh goody. Problem solved.

Obama letting people keep canceled health plans for another year - CBS News



WTF? Abracadabra, your old policies exist again?

 

[Amelia]

So all the angry people whose insurance rates are going up get on more year to pay lower rates and stew about how their insurance will soon be cancelled anyway. Pretty sure this isn't going to give Obama the political cover he hopes for. Pretty sure it won't push the story until after the midterm elections.

But .