Emails Cast Unflattering Light On Internal Politics of Healthcare.gov Rollout 392
An anonymous reader writes with this report from The Verge linking to and excerpting from a newly released report created for a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, including portions of eight "damning emails" that offer an unflattering look at the rollout of the Obamacare website.
The Government Office of Accountability released a report earlier this week detailing the security flaws in the site, but a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released yesterday is even more damning. Titled, "Behind the Curtain of the HealthCare.gov Rollout," the report fingers the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversaw the development of the site, and its parent Department of Health and Human Services. "Officials at CMS and HHS refused to admit to the public that the website was not on track to launch without significant functionality problems and substantial security risks," the report says. "There is also evidence that the Administration, to this day, is continuing its efforts to shield ongoing problems with the website from public view."
Writes the submitter: "The evidence includes emails that show Obamacare officials more interested in keeping their problems from leaking to the press than working to fix them. This is both both a coverup and incompetence."
Emails didn't get lost? (Score:5, Funny)
Someone didn't do their job.
But it really isn't a surprise those responsible are now in CYA and finger pointing mode.
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It's news only because die hard liberals or should I say Obama supporters refuse to accept he or his team is anything less than stellar. It's all Bush's fault or those damn republicans keep blocking or someone other than himself. And when Obama and his supporters started blaming everyone else and anything else as the problems happened, it was blamed on someone else again.
but more importantly, it appears this broken management and failed project is still being run with broken management but it's being hidden
Re:This is supposed to be the *WAY* they do their (Score:5, Insightful)
US politics at its finest. We select the most popular people around to lead, and then act surprised when it turns out that they're not necessarily the best leaders...
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Politics? Darn, I should have read the article - I thought this was about http://obamacare.com/ [obamacare.com]
Re:This is supposed to be the *WAY* they do their (Score:5, Insightful)
Politics? Darn, I should have read the article - I thought this was about http://obamacare.com/ [obamacare.com]
My point is that democracy doesn't put competent people in charge most of the time. That's just the nature of the beast.
Do you think that anybody else who has been elected in the last 20 years would have pulled off Obamacare? Heck, put Obama in a different period of time and he probably couldn't have done as well as he did either. The forces that move the nation are far bigger than the president.
Re:This is supposed to be the *WAY* they do their (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you think that anybody else who has been elected in the last 20 years would have pulled off Obamacare
They were smart enough not to try.
Heck, put Obama in a different period of time and he probably couldn't have done as well as he did either
Obama is hands down the worst president so far in my lifetime. Even Jimmy Carter was better and that's saying something.
The forces that move the nation are far bigger than the president.
What a lame excuse. President Obama is a pompous, preening and vainglorious windbag, in the best Harvard tradition, who doesn't know a damned thing about how to run anything, least of all the United States. The only bright spot is that the people who voted for him are still taking it on the chin economically while the rest of us enjoy our stock profits. Maybe they'll learn their lesson this time and think more carefully about it before they vote in 2016, but I'm not holding my breath. After all, the working class seem to be suckers for self imposed economic punishment with their recent election choices.
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Do you think that anybody else who has been elected in the last 20 years would have pulled off Obamacare
They were smart enough not to try.
Great, then count yourself among the very small minority of people in industrialized nations who think that not having a universal system of health insurance is a good idea. The issue is that people complain about the execution of Obamacare, when in reality they objected to having any kind of solution to the healthcare problem at all.
Re:This is supposed to be the *WAY* they do their (Score:4, Insightful)
What's the difference between Bush's illegal wars and Obama's illegal wars [washingtonpost.com]?
In terms of the economy, Obama has done at least as much damage over time, based on his own administration's charts, even. Remember all those rosy predictions?
Re:This is supposed to be the *WAY* they do their (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you talking about the War in Iraq, which Obama boasted continuously about ending, despite loud criticism at the time that he was creating the conditions for what's going on right now with ISIS?
I wouldn't be boasting about that anymore, his related words are now one of those things his opponents publish on Twitter so as to illustrate how incompetent he is.
Re:This is supposed to be the *WAY* they do their (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, the "economic mess" at the end of Bush's term was in large part due to the collapse of securities based on bad mortgages that were encouraged by Democrat members of Congress, in particular Barney Frank. In particular, they wanted to call it racist to deny loans to people who clearly had no ability to pay them off, using the race card by claiming it was "redlining". And it is also possible that they expected the timing of these loans imploding to happen at the end of Bush's term. While you can blame Bush for our presence in the mid-east because he was actively leading that, it's a much farther stretch to blame the economy on him. However, I do put the blame that we are still in such a bad economy almost six years later on Obama's policies. And now he wants his own "illegal wars".
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No known organizational model puts competent people in charge most of the time. Even the strickests of meroticracies are subject to the Peter Principle [wikipedia.org], even if they somehow fail to promote people who are best at promoting themselves. Democracy is superior because it lets outright lunatics to be constrained and removed as well as succession handled without bloodshed.
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Think back to High School.
Remember the people who were popular?
What did you think about them?
Yep, that's what we have now.
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to Islamization of America
I don't see how much has happened as far as Islamization of America. Islam is still a super-small minority in America, right? I'd bet the Hindu population is growing faster, and even that's small.....
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There seems to be cities in which are somewhat majority muslim. Dearborn Michigan I think is one of them. Youtube that and you will see a lot of videos posted by people protesting it.
But I think the original poster is thinking of the mosque that the boston bombers attended has produced many radicalized muslims and keeps being investigated but ignored by the FBI.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/... [usatoday.com]
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfro... [newsmax.com]
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Dearborn is supposedly the most Arab and muslim 'city' in the US (pop 100k, not much of a city). It's only 40% arab, and some percent of that group are Lebanese Christians (the earliest Arab immigrants to the area). Suppose there are some non-arab muslims though. I can't seem to find decent religious demographics in a quick search.
Canada has been sending a few anglo islam converts to go die in arabia lately. I have no idea what would inspire someone who grew up in Calgary or Winnipeg and got a proper first
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Yup, just no clue. I mean, in 2014 alone twelve million Americans who did not previously have health insurance were covered, adding to the estimated 20 million who have obtained some form of insurance benefit and access to health care since the law took effect in 2011. Plus pre-existing condition coverage, lowering overall national spending on health, etc. Horrible, horrible stuff.
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Re: This is supposed to be the *WAY* they do their (Score:4, Insightful)
My complaint? My family health cost has tripled. That's 3 times what it did cost. Oh yeah, the level of service we get for that extra is not only missing but the quality has gone down dramatically. I suppose you cold say my problem is with the Education Department, somehow they forgot to teach people about the failures, corruption and down right misery of socialism.
Re: This is supposed to be the *WAY* they do their (Score:4)
I don't know what the AC's situation is, but some plans that were once available are not. Some people can afford to have what Obama considered "junk plans" but can no longer get them and must pay higher rates for plans they don't want or including coverage for events that can't happen to them. What does a woman who has had her tubes tied (and would happily have an abortion if somehow the operation wasn't really successful) or a post-menopausal woman want with coverage for pregnancy?
It is almost always better to self insure portions of risk if you can reasonable do do -- why pay middlemen? Do you buy the "extended warranty" on every USB cable you buy from BestBuy or NewEgg? No, because you can easily absorb the cost of replacing it OR, perhaps, you only expect to be using it a few weeks by which time you are pretty sure you will accidentally leave it in a rental car or at a Starbucks by accident so you just don need long term protection.
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It is almost always better to self insure portions of risk if you can reasonable do do -- why pay middlemen? Do you buy the "extended warranty" on every USB cable you buy from BestBuy or NewEgg?
No, but that's a useless analogy. There is NO medical equivalent of the USB cable I buy from NewEgg. Readily available, universally applicable, and most of all, cheap. There is nothing whatsoever in the US healthcare system that qualifies as cheap. Anywhere. Even the most trivial of routine checkups required by law (e.g. college admissions) has a cash price of hundreds of dollars. It only costs less than that if you (or your employer) has paid money into the protection racket called health "insurance.
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vs.
In standard usage, "paying for X" means "paying in full" (try telling your mortgage company that you are "paying your monthly payment" when you are only paying 50% of the required payment and see if the agree with your assessment that you are "paying your monthly payment").
People do love free stuff of cour
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Google broken for you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
http://council.brandeis.edu/ [brandeis.edu]
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hsrinfo... [nih.gov]
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And that is simply a problem with the law or hospitals not being willing to say "no". When someone presents with the types of problems that result in "very expensive ER visits rather than the much less expensive office visits", the ER should simply tell them to leave (and have them arrested for trespassing if they refuse) because they are not emergencies - if I call 911 because I want a pizza, they won't deliv
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ERs generally cannot turn away emergency patients or deny them care under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). Even if it appears that they have shown up in a non-emergency state, they still have to be assessed, and they are sometimes turned away for minor things, or at least given prescriptions that they have to pay for and which the hospital is not required to provide. The goal was to combat patient dumping that hospitals were doing for patients that couldn't pay even though th
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And, that's a problem with our laws that should be fixed. If a competent PCP would not have referred the person to an ER, the ER doctor/PA/NP should be able to tell the person that their condition is not a medical emergency and advise them to see their primary care provider and the ER should suffer no more risk than the PCP would have. It should also be a crime to misrepresent your medical condition at an ER in order to get preferred or priority treatment (yes, this would rarely be prosecuted, but the occas
Only $11 million per person! (Actually $20 million (Score:3, Informative)
Let's assume that 12 million estimate is correct, that due to Obamacare, 12 million people who weren't insured before are now insured. Of course, other people give different estimates, but let's give Obama the benefit of the doubt.
The net cost of Obamacare to the federal taxpayers is $1.3 trillion (CBO). $1.3 trillion / 12 million people covered = $11.3 million per person.
I don't think we got a good deal.
The $11 million per person covered is of course just the direct cost to the federal government. In 201
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Why do your figures leave out the increases before the ACA was passed?
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So there's another trillion dollars it cost average Americans, in the form of much higher premiums. A couple TRILLION dollars to (maybe) cover $12 million people. At a cost of around $20 million per person covered, I don't think I'd trumpet that as a victory if I were a Democrat. (And in fact Democrat most candidates are distancing themselves from the mess.)
Your math doesn't work out. Care to show your work?
And nobody liked Obamacare. That is why it was able to be made into a law. The US political system isn't capable of enacting solutions that actually work.
What solution that provides universal coverage would you advocate? Or, are you more in favor of a system where you generally do well if your parents did well?
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That's a fundamental characteristic of all human endeavors in which diverse viewpoints are summarized into (conceptually) binary action choices. People disagree on stuff. We need to take actions in some areas where we disagree. "Everyone equally unhappy" is just the other half of the Pareto walnut.
sPh
I'm wrong, shouldn't figure trillions in my head. (Score:5, Insightful)
My numbers don't work. Now I'm not sure how I got that number. Perhaps I should use paper and pencil when calculating Obama-sized costs.
I'm going to show my work like this is fourth grade, so if I blew it again someone can easily point it out.
Direct federal cost: 1 300 000 000 000
people covered: 12 000 000
(roughly double the cost once you include premium increases, but let's start with just the cost we'll pay as federal taxes).
Cost:
1 300 000 000 000
_______________
12 000 000
Start dropping zeroes from both to get reasonable sized numbers for numerator and denominator:
1 300 000 000 000 dollars to cover
_______________
12 000 000 people
1 300 000 000 dollars to cover
___________
12 000
1 300 000 dollars to cover
________
12 people
108 333 dollars to cover
______
1 person
With premium increases, maybe $200,000 per person. So that's expensive, but not nearly as expensive as I had first calculated.
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Re:Only $11 million per person! (Actually $20 mill (Score:5, Informative)
$1.3 trillion (US) federal tax cost / 12 million people = $11.3 million per person covered. Does that look right so far, or did I fat-finger the calculation? That's US trillion, which is different from UK trillion, I believe.
As has already been pointed out you were off by a factor of 100 and that's assuming the basis of your calculation is correct. It isn't.
Here is the actually CBO report: https://cbo.gov/publication/45... [cbo.gov]
They estimate 1.4 trillion over the next __10 years__ with a net cost of $36 billion in 2014. 36 billion for 11 million people is approximately $3300 per person per year. Without considering inflation that is about $33,000 per person over 10 years.
For comparison the US goverment in 2012 spent $4075 per person on healthcare (http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_STAT#).
On a side note, European nations providing free healthcare to their entire population spent about $3500 (Purchasing Parity USD) per person in 2012. Adding in private expenditures and the US spent about 2~2.5x the amount per person on healthcare as comparible nations in Western Europe / Australia / Japan and generally achieved worse out comes in pretty much all categories.
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Let's assume
Instead of your napkin calculations, maybe you should look for legitimate estimates.
Here's the Congressional Budget Office: http://www.cbo.gov/publication/45231 [cbo.gov]
If you dig around some more, you'll find plenty of other people who have actually run the numbers and explained their forecasts.
In 2013, we saw the following rate increases due to Obamacare:
And if the insurance company doesn't spend 80% or 85% of those premiums on healthcare, they have to cut a check and return the excess to their customers.
Thanks Obama!
Also, here's a fact check for your numbers: http://www.fac [factcheck.org]
You realize that revision is just slightly higher? (Score:3, Informative)
I used the CBO estimate of $1.3 trillion. You linked to their revised estimate of $1.38 trillion. Yes, you're right, it'll be 6% more expensive than the estimate I used. :rolleyes:
Re:This is supposed to be the *WAY* they do their (Score:5, Informative)
Umm.. The numbers are not even close to 12 million.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/th... [forbes.com]
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/... [nbcnews.com]
Obamacare seems to have only helped a little under 3% of the people who did not have coverage previously. Even now, there are still problems with it as one of the largest insurance companies in Minnesota is pulling out of the exchange.
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/... [nbcnews.com]
Now before you get all pissy, this isn't a swipe at obamacare, it's the facts surrounding it that you seem to have missed and evidence of the GP's statement that "they simply do not have any clue to anything that they are involved with". Evidently, neither do you unless you were listening to them.
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http://www.cbo.gov/sites/defau... [cbo.gov]
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Government makes a mess of a program
Government make s a website that touts the success of that program.
Do you see where I'm going here?
After all the lies (go ahead...deny they told us lies) do you really have faith that the stuff they are telling you now is true?
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I just want to point out that all of your citations are from before the enrollment deadline. I think your latest post was from April.
How about something a little more recent?
In fact, if you follow the website attacks on Obamacare based on the number of people enrolled, you will find a deluge of articles leading up to April of 2014 and then...silence. You'll still find other attacks, but none based on the number of newly enrolled. Then, in May, you see a lot of articles saying, "Well, OK, a lot of people
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They are all from april 3 or later. The only deadline they were before is the unofficial expansion Obama gave to april 15 because of the failures in the rollout.
Here is something a little more recent but the open enrollment window is lapsed so your emphasis of more recent is a but misleading. [dailycaller.com]
Re:This is supposed to be the *WAY* they do their (Score:5, Insightful)
Is 12 million the number this week? You can never tell. It goes up and down willy nilly depending on the talking head.
I bet the reality is they have NO CLUE how many people signed up, paid, or used it.
Re:This is supposed to be the *WAY* they do their (Score:4, Insightful)
> BTW, this is emblematic of the Obama administration
It's emblematic of EVERY administration going back thousands of years. Right wing present that this is something new but their world view seems to be completely uninfluenced by an appreciation of human nature or history.
For example:
Augustus was a shrewd and effective manager of his own public image. Itâ(TM)s now easy to take for granted that images of political leaders decorate our currency â" Augustus was among the first rulers to widely disseminate images of his own face on coins.
Itâ(TM)s hard to imagine even the most ardent Democrats supporting the literal deification of Barack Obama or erecting small shrines in his honor throughout Washington DC. By contrast, after Julius Caesar was posthumously declared a god, Augustus, as his adopted son, became known as the son of god. Along with the other gods, he received dedications at small crossroads shrines throughout Rome.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books... [csmonitor.com]
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The Roman government (both Republic and Empire) built roads, aqueducts, and sewers some of which are still in use today 2000 years later. But you know, governments never accomplish anything.
sPh
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Governments can accomplish a lot.
That's not the point here. It's a fact that governments always do their best to cover up their mistakes and self-aggrandize.
Holding up whatever public administration is in place at the current time in scorn for doing that is political gamesmanship at best, and demagoguery at worst.
It's inherent in the system (cf Monty Python).
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They have repaved the road in front of my subdivision 3 fucking times in the last ten years.
The water Department has torn up the street in front of my house twice trying to fix a water leak.
Every time there is a thunderstorm the power goes out.
Where is Augustus when you need him?
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It's hard to imagine even the most ardent Democrats supporting the literal deification of Barack Obama or erecting small shrines in his honor throughout Washington DC. By contrast, after Julius Caesar was posthumously declared a god, Augustus, as his adopted son, became known as the son of god. Along with the other gods, he received dedications at small crossroads shrines throughout Rome.
What about Ronald Reagan? He was a God, right?
http://www.ronaldreaganlegacyp... [ronaldreag...roject.org]
The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project was started in 1997 by Grover G. Norquist.
The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project is committed to preserving the legacy of one of America’s greatest presidents throughout the nation and abroad.
One of the ways we work to further the legacy of Reagan is by asking the governor of every state in the nation to make a proclamation declaring February 6th, "Ronald Reagan Day." An average of 30 governors a year over the last few years have made such a proclamation, choosing to honor character over partisanship.
In addition to ensuring that every February 6th is known as “Ronald Reagan Day,” we work to encourage the naming of landmarks, buildings, roads, etc. after Ronald Wilson Reagan. We continue compiling a list of Reagan dedications that remind American society of the life and legacy of President Reagan. Each one of these dedications serve as a teaching moment for those who were not yet alive during his presidency or to grant those who remember him with the opportunity to reflect on his accomplishments. Whether it be the Ronald Reagan Parkway in Indianapolis, IN or Ronald Reagan National Airport in Arlington, VA; each and every dedication will serve as a teaching moment for generations to come. Our goal is to eventually see a statue, park, or road named after Reagan in all 3,140 counties in the United States. The first project that RRLP worked to name after Ronald Reagan was National Airport, in 1998 renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport.
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I just can't imagine the level of cognitive dissonance involved in Mr. Anti-Government Norquist leading a campaign to have government-built and operated facilities throughout the land named after St. Ronald Reagan.
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Ronald Reagan would not be the first President to be deified.
Look at the monuments in Washington DC to various Presidents. Washington (Obelisk), Jefferson (Pantheon), Lincoln (Parthenon).
All of these are designs used by previous cultures in the worship of their Gods.
We just don't call it that because most of our citizens are nominally monotheistic.
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This is par for the course of many software projects I have been on in the private sector. SSDE, Same *&^% Different Employer.
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Yeah the /. department the article is filed under immediately tipped me off to the bias in the article.
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The Dems only held the House 2 of the past 6 years. Possibly longer.
Poor Rollo (Score:5, Funny)
I feel sorry for Rollo. He seems to get all the blame ever since he stated working for that website project.
What failures? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What failures? (Score:4, Informative)
I haven't looked closely at that link you posted, but every similar story I've looked into has gotten big "wasteful" numbers by adding together the entire IT budgets for multiple years and multiple projects, and then presenting it as a "OMG government waste! OMG OMG!!!" story.
And sadly people lap it up because everyone loves whining about things but refuses to verify the stories. Not that government is perfect, but it certainly won't get better when most individual "government failure" stories are full of lies and misinformation.
For example, the article you linked to says "As of November 2013, the federal exchange healthcare.gov. is estimated to have cost $677 million". Which is a complete lie: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2... [mediamatters.org]
It's trivial to find that that figure is a lie, yet that article still listed it. And you believed it. And I bet you'll keep on reading that website and believing their lies.
Why?
Please describe exactly (Score:5, Interesting)
In your foaming response, please describe _exactly_ what you find so objectionable about the Affordable Care Act. Discuss the 12 million previously uninsured Americans who were able to obtain health insurance and health care in 2014 and what you believe should happen to them. If you were extended on your parents' plan for at least a year post-2011 state how many additional years on your parents' plan you used. If you have corporate health insurance, describe exactly how the ACA affected your coverage. If your response is that premiums went up, you had to change doctors, etc list how many times that happened to you in the 10 years prior to the ACA being passed.
sPh
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I have corporate coverage. I did not have to change doctors, and never have, however premiums did skyrocket in the past two years. I'm effectively paying double what I was before, which isn't that big of a deal as I can afford that. The difference is in the coverage. Under the old plans I had since I started at the company (about 10 years) there were reasonable deductibles and simple copays for most services. Now, however, the deductible is nearly $4000. This means that if I need tests done, it's comi
Re:Please describe exactly (Score:4, Informative)
please describe _exactly_ what you find so objectionable about the Affordable Care Act
I used to have affordable insurance for my wife and I. The ACA killed it. Were forced to go to a new plan that:
1) Has much higher monthly premiums (we went from roughly $230/month to about $500/month)
2) Has a hugely higher deductible (we went from $2,500 a year to about $12,000 a year). This means that we are much, much farther out of pocket every year, especially if we actually need medical care beyond one or two simple visits annually.
3) We are past any risk of pregnancy. None the less, we are being forced to pay for elaborate maternity care that we cannot possibly use.
4) The new plan forced us to give up the doctor we've been using for 15 years unless we want to pay cash for that in a way that doesn't help with our deductible.
5) The two best local hospitals are no longer available to us unless we want to pay retail for their use, and get no benefit against our deductible.
Prior to this "affordable" new act, we had no need to change insurance, doctors, hospitals or anything else for well over 10 years.
Because of how the math is working out, we're told to expect that next year's premiums will go up by another 45-55%. Thanks, Mr. Obamacare Cheerleader, if you're one of the people who helped to empower the people who snuck this 100% partisan monstrosity through congress on Pelosi's "deeming" technique. Thanks a lot.
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Because of how the math is working out, we're told to expect that next year's premiums will go up by another 45-55%. Thanks, Mr. Obamacare Cheerleader, if you're one of the people who helped to empower the people who snuck this 100% partisan monstrosity through congress on Pelosi's "deeming" technique. Thanks a lot.
In all seriousness, if the facts are as you claim, go to the media or write your congressman.
Fox News and Republican politicians have embarrassed themselves repeatedly by publicizing Obamacare horror stories that completely fall apart when verified.
They'd love to have a solid example of someone who really did get shafted and can't get a lower cost plan.
P.S. You say "Were forced to go to a new plan," if you didn't go through the exchange, your insurance company may be the one shafting you.
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repeatedly by publicizing Obamacare horror stories that completely fall apart when verified
But this isn't a horror story. This is just the ACA, doing exactly what it's designed to do. Obviously it's not doing what Obama repeatedly promised it would do, but that was all lies in advance of them ramming the law through. There's nothing shocking (from the point of view of the law) about our situation, it's exactly what was intended - use the higher rates as a new tax to fund a huge entitlement expansion for people who make less money. Self employed middle class people are the beasts of burden in thi
Re:Please describe exactly (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to have affordable insurance for my wife and I. The ACA killed it. Were forced to go to a new plan that:
I used to not have insurance at all because I couldn't afford it, because teaching jobs want to pay you part time salary with no benefits, and two part time jobs don't magically qualify you for benefits. The ACA helped get me that insurance for the first time this year.
1) Has much higher monthly premiums (we went from roughly $230/month to about $500/month)
The premiums in my area were about $500/month for a single person (never mind a family plan). They are now about $150/month, and actually cover more medications and scenarios than before.
2) Has a hugely higher deductible (we went from $2,500 a year to about $12,000 a year). This means that we are much, much farther out of pocket every year, especially if we actually need medical care beyond one or two simple visits annually.
The deductibles for the plans in the past were, if I could even afford them, roughly $6-10k per year here. After the ACA, our deductibles are down to about $2500-3500 depending on the plan. Again, huge savings.
3) We are past any risk of pregnancy. None the less, we are being forced to pay for elaborate maternity care that we cannot possibly use.
This is, from a strictly money point of view, true. But instead of thinking of "I'm paying for something I don't use!", your family tree very likely has some daughters/granddaughters/nieces/cousins somewhere. Your premium helps keep it cheap for them. So why the complaints here? Your maternity care portion of your premium can't be very much, what, 5% of the total?
4) The new plan forced us to give up the doctor we've been using for 15 years unless we want to pay cash for that in a way that doesn't help with our deductible. 5) The two best local hospitals are no longer available to us unless we want to pay retail for their use, and get no benefit against our deductible.
I can't visit every hospital in the area either, but this isn't because of anything to do with the ACA, as much as it is a major insurance provider in the area is acting like a huge douche, and refusing to negotiate new contracts with the city and other insurance providers that allow the prices to remain low. This is a corporate decision, not a government one.
I share my story, not because I am trying to belittle your situation -- I definitely feel for you, having been insurance-less for a long time because of high payments, I understand worrying about costs -- but because I do not like the immediate jump to "I'm having a lot of trouble, therefore, this law was evil and wrong". It has its problems, but two things: (1) it has helped a lot of people, so completely scrapping it isn't helpful, we need to explore ways to keep the benefits in place while lowering your premium so everyone gets help; and (2) a lot of your complaints regarding losing doctors and hospitals and even premiums to some degree rely on the free market. It largely depends on how much competition is in your area, and the decisions made by your employer, the insurance company, and the doctors/hospitals themselves, as to what insurance they will provide or take. Nothing in the law says they are required to drop plans; that was a business decision they made, and businessmen are not always that smart. So instead of directing all the anger at the law, you should also be questioning why your company and insurance feel they need to raise prices so much.
If you are having trouble with your current premiums, the people on the Healthcare.gov hotline are very helpful. I would call them up and ask about private insurance plans are in your area. They can price check plans for any provider in your area, and check different levels of coverage, and tell you the cheapest one. From there you can contact the insurance company directly if it sketches you out to a
Don't know what you're talking about... (Score:3, Insightful)
My mother's deductibles wouldn't change if she switched to one of the 'ObamaCare' plans. They're already in the triple or quadruple digits (depending on what services she's needing.) It's actually so bad that both my parents have decided to sit on their hands until their SSI/Medicare kicks in within the next year or two. And this is coming from people who had 150/mo and no more than 300 dollar deductibles at the turn of the millenium. THAT is how fucked up the current medical situation is in the US.
Their pr
Re:Please describe exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama correctly outlawed them. He did them a favor.
What? Obama's new wonder-plan is what TOOK AWAY our low deductible plan and forced us, for more money, to buy one that will cost us thousands more each year in premiums, and ten thousand more a year in deductibles. The people you're defending - Obama, Pelosi, Reid - forced us to buy a high deductible plan with fewer benefits, minus the doctor we'd used for years, and more. Obama didn't "outlaw" bad, expensive coverage, he just forced us into that exact situation. Thanks for shilling for him, though - it's nice to see that BS so transparently on display for all to see.
Re:Please describe exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Please read the original plan and then follow the idiotic path of compromises that Republicans forced onto it rendering it into the watered down ridiculous mess that it is.
The Republicans forced no such thing. Not a single one of them voted for it. The Democrats were the only people who wanted, and who rammed through, the law they put together.
democrats didn't help things either since they were so desperate to get SOMETHING through that they were willing to do just about anything without really thinking through the consequences of their actions
What are you talking about? Everything that's happened was predicted in plain language for everyone involved before they "deemed" it passed in a 100% partisan maneuver. Larger deficits? Playing out exactly as predicted. Huge jump in premiums and deductibles for those that don't get entitlement subsidies? Playing out exactly as predicted. That's what the Democrats WANTED: get insurance for more people by taking more money from one group and giving to another. It's a transfer tax that reduces benefits for those that actually pay in order to give SOME benefits to those that don't, or who pay only part of the way.
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So when any of the normal annual changes take place (the way they handle certain experimental drugs or therapies, the way they handle certain hospital scenarios, etc), the insurer can no longer provide the plan
[citation needed]
the ACA shuts it down because it doesn't provide post-menopausal women maternity care, etc.
That is a separate complaint, an emdash was absolutely the wrong punctuation to use there. If they have to terminate plans and cannot change them by adding onto them, which I doubt, then that complaint is valid. Complaining that plans are shut down because they don't provide comprehensive medical coverage is a separate complaint, and something of a bullshit one as well. Supposedly post-menopausal women have given birth before.
Re:Please describe exactly (Score:5, Informative)
BS the new plans have HUGE deductible's and only cover what they are forced to (mostly female and child related bits). Premiums have doubled and are looking like 3x for next year. Dental is a joke if you can even find a plan that offers it. Lets compare:
Before 400 ish a month now 800 ish.
Reasonable deduct 5k but only for major stuff all the day to day excluded, now 10k and nearly everything feeds into it.
Dental and Optics built in, now just for kids and maybe a realy bad tack on.
It really matters what state your in. But from my point it looks like the rates got jacked up by whatever the max the feds would pay. This is what tends to happen whenever the feds throw money at something, economics kicks in and the cost of goods goes up by whatever the feds tacked on.
Was it really so bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I can tell, the site is up and running "mostly" only a year late and not nearly as over budget as I expected. What do you expect from a project initiated by uneducated people like politicians and sales people. They of course ask "computer experts" for help, but let's be honest... Politicians wouldn't know a qualified computer programmer from a Barbie doll.
I support ObamaCare aka ACA on a federal level simply because it requires one big ass database system to be made by one company with a whole nation of people to kick the crap out of the company making it. And let's be honest... Whether the system is for all of America or just a state, the system is almost the same.
Imagine if a state like Mississippi or Oklahoma had to get a system made? They'd hire a guy named Jom Bob from church to do it. They'd piss away the entire budget before they even found Jim Bob. They'd run it on index cards and toilet paper in type writers with no correction ink.
Is there anyone dumb enough on Slashdot to think :
A) a government sponsored software project can be done without corruption, delays and major budget problems?
B) all 50 states in America could actually manage to get a system up and running at a state level... Why not ask Florida about their prepaid college project and how bad that for screwed up. I worked at the company writing that one and that project was doomed to fail before it even started. They built the damn thing on Tandem computers with Thomas Conrad ArcNet and had a total of one guy who even knew how to boot the machine.
Re:Was it really so bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm generally in agreement with what you say, but when we have 30 years of "the government is the problem, the government is incompetent, let's drown government in the bathtub" and Grover Norquist the result is - surprise - government capabilities degraded or destroyed. Look at the Hoover Dam, the TVA [1], the Post Office's tremendous scientific and engineering advances in automated sorting and handling systems in the 1960s, the Iowa class battleships, the reforestation of large areas of the south, etc for examples of highly capable and well-executed government projects.
sPh
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Your login is "LostMyBeaver". I'm sorry, but I just have to ask... did you have a sex change?
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Re: (Score:3)
Imagine if a state like Mississippi or Oklahoma had to get a system made? They'd hire a guy named Jom Bob from church to do it. They'd piss away the entire budget before they even found Jim Bob. They'd run it on index cards and toilet paper in type writers with no correction ink.
Well to be fair the deep-red state Kentucky had a very successful rollout of Obamacare (rebranded as "Kynect"), including it's own health insurance exchange AND medicaid expansion -- the whole Obamacare enchilada.
Under Obamacare, the federal insurance exchange was never intended to serve the entire country. In fact ideally nobody would have to use it, because states were supposed to set up their own exchanges that would better reflect the needs of their citizens than a federal one would. If you are force
Re: (Score:2)
> church...index cards and toilet paper
Exactly. Those xians are so stupid as you note. They are all racist and want to murder us minorities. That is the way of their kind. They flood the streets with guns to kill young black men, and they know that by denying them ER care that more of us will die. That is their ultimate plan. They are denying us healthcare in order to kill us.
I... think you're focusing on a minor bigotry of the GP, which was not really related to his main point.
More people would have joined up (Score:2)
More people would have joined up
if they got free Rollo chocolates
In a similar way, around here they are trying to promote the annual flu shot.
You get a free Klondike Bar with your flu shot.
I think a Klondike bar is something that used to be called an "Eskimo Pie" until some PC folks thought the Inuit tribe would be upset.
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I hear they're bringing them shots right out to the trailer park now. The whole Cuyler clan got them shots, except Early, who said it was all a plot and no goddamn body's gonna give him any flu shot because he don't wanna catch the autism.
Damn Obama...
How do you cast a flattering light on this? (Score:4)
What I find ironic is that supposedly one big reason for Obama's electoral success was due to his team's deep understanding of technology, the internet, and social media compared to Republicans and yet they couldn't get a website running properly nor did they have the smarts to hire an industry leader to develop it.
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This is making the faulty assumption that Obama was able to bring those same people in to play in building the ACA website. The sad truth is that most of the feds that were involved in the development of the website were probably hired back in the Clinton era, if not back in the Reagan administration, and are so filled with hubris that they think they know better than the people they contracted for their expertise.
Imagine what it is like to come in to a project with 10+ years in building websites, just to h
Re:How do you cast a flattering light on this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse than a faulty assumption. Cmms and HHS were responsible for the site, not the president's campaign team.
And I doubt the knowledge domain transfers that much to a site with so many interactions with other sites. Nor to do many business rules.
It is ignorance combined with lack of thought to consider the two remotely connected.
Re:And we're surprised why? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think it's limited to government, you must be very, very young.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:And we're surprised why? (Score:4, Insightful)
In my city, one company owes 80% of the hospitals and doctors. The other 20% are owned by another company. The 80% company is now not letting the 20% insurance plans to use their facilities, to drive that one out of town. So in fact, if you want good health care choices, you have no real choice which insurance plan you use.
Also, 30% of the city has an ISP choice between fiber and cable; the rest has DSL or cable. Get a bit outside of town and DSL goes away. So there is almost no choice in ISPs, and when they have horrible policies they don't care at all what I say.
On the other hand, with government I can vote to change the people and policies. It's not perfect, and it doesn't always work (especially when most people whine about the govt but don't vote), but it often does work. We've gotten rid of a senator who ran on religious bigotry and hatred, for example.
Re:And we're surprised why? (Score:5, Insightful)
You really don't believe me? Wow.
Pittsburgh. UPMC has decided that Highmark (and thus all Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurers) can no longer use their facilities because Highmark is threatening UPMC's near-monopoly status in Western PA. UPMC is trying to crush all competition in this area.
If you think being able to vote for the people and policies in government is worthwhile, why does your city have the problems you have described?
So you dislike the government but believe that it should be used to solve every company-vs-company dispute? Huh. No, the local government is finally trying to clean the mess up but they can't really do much to interfere with private contracts between companies. Turns out that anti-competitive behavior is mostly legal, and the state and federal governments haven't gotten involved.
These problems exist because being anti-competitive is a good way to make money. Seriously, you are blaming a company-vs-company problem on the government... how does that make any sense? If I get mugged, I should blame the police and not blame the mugger?
Re:And we're surprised why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow, yourself. You presented a plausible scenario with essentially no information, it is less than anecdotal evidence, indistinguishable from fantasy. With a city and the parties identified, it actually becomes meaningful and verifiable (or disprovable).
I didn't say government should be involved in any dispute between companies, so where do you come off claiming I advocate its involvement in all such disputes? You're trying to paint me as being extreme, and I may be, but on the other side from that you accuse me of being.
You paint UPMC as the villain, but I do not accept your contention. I think you've been watching too many Highmark commercials that have been attacking UPMC. What I see is two companies which are each involved in activities they should have been barred from by state (not federal) regulators. UPMC has been a healthcare provider for a long time, in 1998 it was allowed to offer healthcare insurance, Highmark has been a healthcare insurer for a long time and last year purchased West Penn Allegheny (which had sued both Highmark and UPMC for acting together to stifle hospital competition) to became a healthcare provider. I see two governmental agencies, the Pennsylvania Insurance Department and the Division of Acute and Ambulatory Care, failing to represent the interests of the people of Pennsylvania by failing to prevent the obvious conflict of interest involved in allowing integrated delivery system providers (particularly in companies which already dominated one aspect of that system). The solution is for government to take actions to eliminate its need for further involvement, and the state went the other way, reminiscent of our" too big to fail" banks.
You portray UPMC as the bully using its position to dominate the market for healthcare when Highmark is a much bigger company in both revenues and profits that dominates the region in providing health insurance, which purchased the plaintiff in the antitrust suit against it to kill the suit, and is in the catbird seat as it has the revenue up front and can direct business to itself for its customers who would have little choice while UPMC can merely cut off its nose to spite its face by not accepting Highmark insurance thereby turning away business, I hardly think that is the abusive position you suggest. It was not the local government that dealt with the mess, it was the Pennsylvania Insurance Department which should have prevented the issue 26 years ago.
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Unless you happen to want to connect to the Internet and you hate the one company in your location that offers broadband connectivity. Oligopolies are the order of the day.
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Cover up, incompetence, and Government. Why am I not surprised at all.
and somehow twist it to interpret it as making the claim that it's limited to government?
You must be very very dumb.
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If you were slightly more perceptive, you'd know that it was implied.
If you're as young as s/he, perhaps there's hope yet.
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
1) The administration didn't knowingly force people to use a badly designed, insecure web site that wasn't ready for prime time. That's just something the administration's critics made up, out of context.
That is correct. The administration did not force anybody to use the website at all during the period it was non-functional. There were alternative ways of signing up, and the enrollment periods were extended to allow time to use the system once it was in better shape.
2) The administration has fixed all of the security concerns, and that the whole platform is now working as they promised it would, and that anyone saying otherwise is lying and spinning the glorious real facts on the ground.
I'm sure that not all security concerns have been addressed. I'm sure that 20 years from now they won't be addressed. In fact, I doubt there is a single government or corporate website functioning anywhere where all security concerns are addressed.
I think the issue here is unrealistic expectations. This is an incredibly large undertaking, and problems with large undertakings are fairly common.
If it were up to me I'd greatly simplify the whole mess which would make rollout much less complex. I'd start by simplifying medicare so that there is just one deductible, coinsurance rate, and out of pocket limit for everything. Then I'd just start ratcheting down the eligibility age a few years at a time until everybody is eligible from birth. No new systems to deal with, etc. Then I'd start fixing the provisioning of healthcare services (start opening public providers and gradually transition the system to one where the coverage network is government-run). But, the various vested interests don't want to buy into something like that, so we end up with the affordable care act instead of a system like one of those that has already been tried and tested elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
This was not an incredibly large undertaking. The functionality is not complex. Nothing about it is complex or incredible large.
It has to:
1. Allow you to create an account;
2. Verify your identify;
3. Show you available health care plans in your area;
4. Let you select one;
5. Help you pay for it.
In its basic form, this is something that a group of college kids could whip up in a week or so.
The only thing even approa
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Informative)
There are hundreds of EDI-type transactions behind every one of those "simple" actions. Plus verification, cross-matching with multiple insurance carriers (each with their own system), testing all the interconnections. Just to scratch the surface.
sPh
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Verify your identify;
And how do you propose to do that?
3. Show you available health care plans in your area;
Unless the list is 100% based on geography, this is not a straightforward problem. Also, where does this list come from? What data describes a plan for comparison purposes?
5. Help you pay for it.
How much does it cost? I imagine that has a bunch of rules behind it.
The problem is that the website itself could be relatively simple, but there are layers and layers of systems behind it, and those cost a lot more to build.
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this website is some kind of horrible, complex, unknown beast that simply could not be tamed, a website so complex that few applications could approach it in terms of functional requirements.
It depends on what the purpose of the website was. If the purpose was to create employment for contractors, and make the health insurance programme look bad, then the requirements would need to be more complex.
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
On top of that steps 2 and 3 require interacting with external systems who may also not be able to handle load well, and probably use a combination of buggy and poorly documented interfaces, and step 5 requires reading a bill so long that the people who voted for it didn't bother to read it. You're grossly trivializing the problem.
Re: (Score:3)
hatchet job using cherry picked emails to smear political opponents over now solved problems. nothing to see here, move along.
So you are ALSO saying that the information presented is incorrect ... that the people at HHS had NO idea that the site wasn't full of holes in terms of security and functionality. That the "cherry-picked" emails that show the administration knew the site was a train wreck are referring to something else, because the site wasn't a train wreck when it went live. Right? I see. So if that's incorrect, then what you're saying is that the administration did NOT know that the site was a train wreck. Which makes
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
A site intended to serve up to 30 million people execute complex financial changes in a 90-day window was three months late, went live at ~80% capability, and will probably be close to 95% capability at the beginning of its second year of operation is a "disaster"? Perhaps you don't remember the early days of, say, Amazon?
sPh
Re: (Score:2)
$197 billion for a web site? "Really?"
I'm sure that figure includes more than just the website. I suspect most large companies pay on the order of a billion dollars for an ERP system, and you can't expect the government to complete with a private operation for efficiency.
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Someone who can blame Obamacare on Republicans is someone who can blame anything on them.
I'm sure Republicans are responsible for every bad thing that's ever happened. Like say the Black Death, Microsoft Bob, and Brittany Spears.
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The Affordable Care Act is working extremely well, with 12 million Americans who previously had essentially no access to health care having been covered this year alone, so I'm not sure where "blame" comes from in your post. Projection perhaps? The ACA's basic design was the Heritage Foundation plan of 1993 which was claimed at that time by Republicans to be a 'free market-based' alternative to the Clinton health care reform proposals. Between 1993 and 2014 it suddenly stopped being free-market? Huh.
sPh
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That the F-35 isn't a perfect warplane is well established. On the other hand the "Affordable Care Act" is absolutely useless against the latest Russian and Chinese combat aircraft. Even the elderly Iranian air force is more than a match for the ACA.