November, 2013 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 7: Chicago Tribune and Doctors Abandoning Obama Care, Sergeant Shultz In The Administration and More

This is our seventh post this month on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. These seven posts follow more than twenty other posts we did over the past three months trying to document, review, and quantify all of the fiascos being spawned by this legislation. 

We will finish up this month’s review over the next 2-3 days. Not because there is nothing else to talk about. On the contrary, the bad news grows every day as more glitches, failures, and lies are uncovered. We are just getting tired and depressed of the whole topic. 

It is a failure. The administration lied. It is causing millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred insurance policies and doctors. The administration lied some more. The website for signups was designed as if a bunch of chimps did the programming. The administration continued to lie. The estimated cost of the whole effort has doubled in just three years. They lied again. The logic of the whole effort will not rein in skyrocketing health care costs; if anything, it will cause them to rise quicker. They continue to lie. The legislation is depressing and suppressing economic growth. More lies. Americans are losing their jobs and having their hours cut back substantially as a result of the legislation. And yes, they continue to lie.

1) The President’s home town newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, correctly crucified the legislation and the operations of the government in mid-October:

If you’ve tried to sign up online for health coverage under the problem-plagued Obamacare exchange, our sympathies. Many people have tried to create accounts and shop for insurance under the new law. Few have succeeded. Those that have enrolled have found that the system is prone to mistakes. Some applications have been sent to the wrong insurance company.

Wait. It gets worse. Those who have managed to browse the marketplace have often been hit by sticker shock. Take Adam Weldzius, a nurse practitioner and single father from Carpentersville. He sought the same level of coverage on the exchange as he and his 7-year-old daughter have now, with the same insurer and the same network of doctors and hospitals. At best, Weldzius found, his monthly premium of $233 would more than double. If he chose a plan priced at the same level, the annual deductible would be $12,700, more than three times his current $3,500 deductible.

2) Journalist Ezra Klein, a longtime Obama supporter also recently got in on the shredding of the Obama Care effort:

So far, the Affordable Care Act’s launch has been a failure. Not “troubled.” Not “glitchy.” A failure. The Obama administration’s top job isn’t beating the Republicans. It’s running the government well. On this — the most important initiative they’ve launched — they’ve run the government badly. They deserve all the criticism they’re getting and more.

When your close friends and supporters are publicly calling your effort a failure, things must be really bad.

3) Three years and over $600 million dollars were not enough to create a relatively simple website to have people sign up for health insurance policies via Obama Care exchanges. When the system went live on October 1, 2013, it was a nightmare. The Obama administration promised that it would all be fixed and ready to go correctly by the end of November. 

This was a highly doubtful and probably stupid promise to make, given that those involved could not make it work in the three years head start they had. It is doubtful they can fix it in eight weeks. 

This is the view of a recent Washington Post story from November 12, 2013:

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.

Looks like another promise broken, another potential lie uncovered, at least in the view of the Post.

4) In late October, 2013, a poll conducted by the New York State Medical Society was made public. The survey invited 409 doctors to anonymously share opinions about the new health care law, and many took time out of their busy days to rip into Obama Care. The findings of the survey of the Society are quite distressing in that they point out another dangerous facet of Obama Care. Many doctors do not like the legislation, will not participate with the people who get health insurance through the exchanges, and many may retire out of disgust or economic necessity because of Obama Care.

Which raises a gruesome scenario: what happens if millions of Americans get insurance via Obama Care but there are no doctors to serve them? The scary results of the survey include the following statistics and quotes:

• 44% of doctors survey said they will not participate in the nation’s new health-care plan.
• Another 33% said they’re still not sure whether to become Obama Care providers.
• Only 23% of the 409 physicians in the survey said they’re taking patients who signed up through Obama Care’s health exchanges.
• “This is so poorly designed that a lot of doctors are afraid to participate,” said Dr. Sam Unterricht, president of the 29,000-member organization. “There’s a lot of resistance. Doctors don’t know what they’re going to get paid.”
• About 75% of doctors who are participated in the Obama Care effort said they “had to participate” because of existing contractual obligations with an insurer or medical provider, not because they wanted to.
• Only one in four doctors “affirmatively” chose to sign up for the exchanges.
• 77% said they had not even been given an Obama Care fee schedule to show much they’ll get paid if they sign up.
• “Obama Care wants to start right away, but who see all these new patients???? Not me,” e-mailed one doctor.
• Another said, “I plan to retire if this disaster is implemented. This is a train wreck.”
• “I refuse to participate in the exchange plans! I am completely opposed to this new law,” said a third respondent.
• One doctor was quite blunt relative to participating in Obama Care: “The solution is simple: Just say no.”
• One physician was so disgusted, he threatened to taken only cash patients going forward.
• “I am seriously considering opting out of all insurance plans including Medicare because of [ObamaCare].”
• “OBAMACARE is a disaster. I have already seen denial of medication, denial of referrals,” one doc said.
• “Any doctor who accepts the exchange is just a bad businessman/woman. Pays terrible,” argued one doctor.
• Said another MD, “Can’t imagine any doctors would be willing to work for so little money? All doctors should boycott.
• “I get screwed from insurance companies already. I refuse to get screwed any longer,” one doctor said.
• Others said they don’t have enough information to make an informed choice: “This is a joke. We are flying blind,” said one doctor.

Old medical saying: the operation was a success but the patient died. Even if Obama Care supporters and the President are able to work out all of the numerous and difficult problems with the operations of the legislation and people do indeed get health care insurance via the exchanges, what if there are only a few doctors around that will service the newly insured? The legislation was a success but the insured still died. Pitiful legislation and inability to anticipate unintended consequences.

5) Another lie and/or deception from the White House was recently reported by CNN, which up until recently was blind to anything that went wrong in the Obama administration. CNN is reporting that a month before the Obama Care website was to go live, many people in the know were warning the White House that the website was not ready to launch despite testimony from administration officials that that was not the case:

• The Obama administration was given stark warnings just one month before launch that the federal healthcare site was not ready to go live, according to a confidential report obtained by CNN.
• The caution, from the main contractor CGI, warned of a number of open risks and issues for the HealthCare.gov web site even as company executives were testifying publicly that the project had achieved key milestones.
• On Capitol Hill on Monday, Medicaid Chief Marilyn Tavenner, whose job it was to oversee the October 1 rollout of the website, said she did not foresee its problems.
• “No, we had tested the website and we were comfortable with its performance,” she said. “Now, like I said, we knew all along there would be as with any new website, some individual glitches we would have to work out. But, the volume issue and the creation of account issues was not anticipated and obviously took us by surprise. And did not show up in testing.”
• But the CGI document, which describes “top risks currently open” and “outstanding issues currently being mitigated” says the testing timeframes are “not adequate to complete full functional, system, and integration testing activities” and lists the impact of the problems as “significant.”
• Another element is listed as ” not enough time in schedule to conduct adequate performance testing” and given the highest priority.
• CGI had no comment other than to confirm authenticity of the report that also gave “the highest priority” and warns “we don’t have access to monitoring tools” and “hub services are intermittently unavailable” — short for the “site’s not working sometimes.”

The week before this CNN reporting, CNN also reported that: 

President Barack Obama didn’t know of problems with the Affordable Care Act’s website — despite insurance companies’ complaints and the site’s crashing during a test run — until after its now well-documented abysmal launch, the nation’s health chief told CNN on Tuesday.

So all of this garbage was going on but no one told the lady in charge of the roll out and no one told the President that his signature legislation victory was about to implode? Are we to believe that Obama and Tavenner were so out of touch with reality that they thought everything was going to be fine? Or did they suppress that information to avoid political and public embarrassment for as long as possible, not telling Americans to take cover to avoid the fallout of this fiasco? 

They are either liars or ignorant, two characteristics no one wants in their leaders.

That will do it for today. Doctors saying no way to Obama Care, highly ranking administration officials either out of the loop or deceptive, a liberal press turning on the administration for its outright failures, and a likely other failure/lie when the system is still not glitch free by the promised November 30 date.

Is there any doubt that this is the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington by the most inept set of politicians in the history of our country?

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