But we will keep reviewing the events that are proving our hypothesis that Obama Care is the worst piece of legislation ever produced by the Washington political class.
1) While the $600 million Federal Obama Care website has deservedly gotten the lion’s share of attention for incompetence and idiocy, the California Obama Care exchange process has also been a total bust. According to the San Jose Mercury News, two weeks after the now infamous debacle that was the Obama Care exchange rollout, California’s process is also a bust:
- The California website does not offer a way to find out which doctors and hospitals are included in each health plan, a major aspect of the entire effort that has not materialized as a reality.
- That feature of the website showed up about a week later than expected but when it did finally appear, it was only in place and online for about 48 hours before it was removed because of what exchange officials called “uneven” performance.
- This faulty website cost a whopping $313 million to develop, funded almost entirely with federal taxpayer dollars.
- So, just between the Federal and California Obama Care data systems processes, the American taxpayer has paid almost $1 billion for less than mediocre results.
- Even worse, in an effort to keep premiums low, some major insurance companies in California are limiting the number of doctors and hospitals they are offering consumers.
- Blue Shield of California confirmed that it will offer only 50% of its network doctors and 75% of its network hospitals to those who sign up for its exchange plans.
Compare this last major shortcoming to what President Obama pledged several years ago: “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”
More untrue words have rarely been spoken in the history of this nation, for both Americans in California and across the country.
2) An article by David Hogberg that appeared on October 5, 2013 on the Amy Ridenour’s National Center Blog did an extensive comparison of Obama care health insurance policies obtained via the Obama Care Colorado exchange website and current health insurance policies in the state and city of Denver, Colorado.
Not surprisingly, based on everything we have been discussing over the past few years, Americans are likely to pay much more for health insurance because of Obama Care than they would have had to spend if Obama Care was never developed:
- The author went in to the Colorado Obama Care exchange website and hit the “Find a Plan” button.
- The first test run involved entering a date-of-birth in 1984, i.e., age 29, 1 person to be covered, and zip code 80224 (Denver).
- Here are the top three results from the search in order of cheapest premium: The cheapest plan listed is a $148 a month catastrophic plan for which subsidies are not available. The cheapest policy for which there are possible subsidies is the $163 a month Bronze plan. The author then left the exchange website and went over to see what health insurance plans were available today at the ehealthinsurance.com website, keeping all of the personal information the same.
- The results show that 11 current plans on ehealthinsurance.com cost less than the cheapest catastrophic plan on the Colorado exchange and 18 plans that cost less than the cheapest Bronze plan.
- In addition, there are three plans with both lower premiums and deductibles than the cheapest catastrophic plan and four such plans compared to the cheapest Bronze plan.
- As an experiment, the author reran both website searches with the same personal information except that rather than a male looking for insurance he changed it to a female looking for insurance.
- Here are the three cheapest plans: For a 29-year-old female in Denver there are nine plans that are cheaper than the lowest-cost catastrophic plan and 18 current Colorado plans that cost lest than the Bronze plans from Obama Care. There are the same number of plans with both lower premiums and deductibles as there are a for a male.
- In short, the comparison shows that there are 20 plans cheaper than the lowest-cost catastrophic plan on the Colorado Obama Care exchange and 36 plans that cost less than the cheapest Bronze plan from the Obama Care exchange.
The most obvious conclusions from all of this is the majority of residents in Colorado who need health care insurance on the private market would have been better off if Obama Care never existed since current state plans are far less expensive than what they will be able to get from the Obama Care exchange process.
However, the more subtle finding of this analysis is in regards to Obama Care subsidies. It is true that the Obama Care legislation sets up a subsidy process so that lesser earning Americans may get credits towards the costs of their health insurance. This a point that many Obama Care supporters constantly harp on, that this kind of comparison above does not take into account the subsidies.
However, that supporting argument is mostly thrown out by the author’s final analysis. The 29-year-old Denver resident in these scenarios will need a monthly subsidy of about $88 to make the lowest cost future Obama Care Bronze plan equal to the lowest current ehealthinsurance.com plan (Bronze - ehealth = subsidy needed, or $163 - $74.70 = $88). To qualify for that level of subsidy an individual cannot make more than $23,817 annually.
For all you 29-year-olds in Denver who make more than that and have that $74.70 plan, you are likely to pay an additional $1,056 a year for health insurance ($88 per month times 12 months) with probably no additional benefits. If you break down that $23,817 to a per hour working wage rate, if you are earning more than about just $11.45 an hour, you will not receive any Obama Care subsidies to pay for that increase of $1056, it is all on you.
Even worse, at the current market plan of $74.70 a month, this equates to $896.40 a year, which is less than the $1,056 annual INCREASE that you will be paying under the scenarios listed above. Not a good deal at all.
The original article with the screen shots of the actual website search results can be accessed at:
http://www.conservativeblog.org/amyridenour/2013/10/5/fun-with-obamacare-exchanges-colorado-version.html
3) For those of us that fear identity theft will be a major problem with Obama Care, those fears are well placed if you look at just two helpful tips that Obama Care “navigators” are supposed to follow in processing a person’s private and sensitive information:
1) “Do not leave documents that contain PII [Personally Identifiable Information] or tax return information on printers and fax machines.” The warning is contained in Section 2.4.3 of the 207-page “Health Insurance Marketplace Navigator Standard Operating Procedures Manual.”
2) The same section asks navigators to “double-check” the fax number before faxing Obama care enrollee’s tax returns: “When faxing PII or tax return information, double-check that the recipient’s fax number is correct and that someone is able to pick up the faxed information immediately.”
The official HHS/Obama Care Navigator manual describes Personally Identifiable Information as follows:
- Identifying information such as consumers’ names, addresses, or SSNs
- Information about consumers’ incomes, personal finances, debts, deductions and exemptions
- Any action taken by the IRS against consumers, such as investigations or penalties
- Any private written agreements (such as a pricing agreement) with the IRS and any background information about these agreements
- Relevant information, even if not found on the return (e.g., expenses)
Scared yet? This type of personal information, your personal information, is floating around in the hands of people that were never screened for criminal backgrounds or identity theft potential. Personal information that could be sitting around some office some where on a printer or fax machine or being send out unencrypted to a potentially unattended fax machine. Be scared, be very scared.
4) One funny yet pathetic topic on Obama Care to close today. I love California politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and Diane Feinstein, their quotes help keep bloggers supplied with alternative reality material on a constant basis. To this infamous list today we add Congressman George Miller, a Democrat from the great state of California.
In the most delusional case of wishful thinking in recent times to come out of Washington, this Congressman actually stated on C-SPAN that “ongoing computer failures in Obama Care’s exchange health insurance markets are actually signs of a huge success.” You cannot make this up.
Lets review: A success sign up rate of about 1%, as we previously reported, in regards to Americans actually signing up of a plan via an Obama Care exchange. Tech and systems experts proving that this website process is a calamity of monumental proportions. The inability for anyone to actually confirm that the exchange website actually worked and they actually got insurance. These are the signs of a huge and epic failure in the real world, which again proves our point that Washington apparently does not live in the real world. I would hate to see what he considers a huge failure.
That will do it for today. Another delusional politician. The nightmare of your personal information sitting on top of an unmanned fax machine. Paying more in Colorado for your health insurance. And the epic failure that is the California Obama Care health exchange. More to come tomorrow…if you can handle it.
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