For a good thorough review of all the other failures, please access the following site:
Detailed findings and research that support the conclusion of failures in this site can be viewed by going through the past month’s Obama Care posts, which have been running mid-month every month since last August.
Today starts another day of failures:
1) We have extensively reviewed the many failures of the Federal health exchange website that the Federal Heath and Human Services organization has been running, or trying to run, since late last year. Slow turnaround times, identity theft, criminals hired as navigators, incorrect information, etc. have been just a few of the many problems and disasters of the Federal website for Obama Care.
But some of the state operated Obama Care health exchange websites apparently are having some serious problems also. The health exchange websites in Oregon, Maryland, and Massachusetts have been such dismal failures in different ways that they are all coming under scrutiny and review for both for functional failures and for escalating and obscene costs, costs that American taxpayers are funding. This story and the details below come from recent reporting done by The Hill reporters.
In Oregon:
- Federal government Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee formally requested that the Government Accountability Office do a detailed review of the $304 million in Federal funds the state government in Oregon received to fund its exchange.
- So far, this has not been a good investment or a well managed project since the Oregon exchange has yet to enroll one person online, despite the infusion of over $300 million Federal taxpayer dollars.
- Not a single enrollee online. Almost seems like you have to try to be this bad in order to be this incompetent.
- In the face of this unmitigated disaster, the state’s governor, John Kitzhaber remains upbeat: "Already more than 225,000 Oregonians have enrolled in quality, affordable coverage, including more than 35,000 in private insurance plans."
- I guess he can afford to be upbeat since most of the $300 million spent for nothing by his state employees did not come from Oregon residents, it came from the rest of the country so no problem that it fell flat on its face.
- Also, while he may be excited by the paper enrollment numbers, what he really meant to say is that 190,000 Oregonians enrolled in Medicaid while ONLY 35,000 enrolled in private insurance programs.
- This is a mix of customers that will destroy the Obama Care business case and financials since those hundreds of thousands Medicaid enrollees will be a net loss to the business case while the only tens of thousands of private insurance enrollees will not pay in enough via premiums to offset the free riders who signed up for Medicaid
- Maryland's Obama Care health exchange is so bad state officials have been trying to decide whether to dump the state-run website and direct Maryland residents to the Federal health care exchange, HealthCare.gov.
- This is like telling people to get off of the Hindenburg and get aboard the Titanic, given how bad the Federal website has been for Obama Care’s performance.
- House Republican lawmakers also want an investigation into this state exchange disaster, given that Maryland also got a large chunk of taxpayer money to build a website that the state may now junk for nothing in return on the taxpayer investment: "By the end of the year, over $100 million federal dollars will have been spent on a project that should have cost much less, and doesn't work," Congressmen Andy Harris of Maryland and Jack Kingston of Georgia, an accusation included in a letter they to Health and Human Services Inspector General Daniel Levinson. "As a result of the fact that Maryland appears willing to continue to waste tens of millions of more federal dollars, we ask that the investigation start immediately."
- As with what happened with the Federal Obama Care website, there are accusations flying relative to the Maryland exchange website that state lawmakers and state government administration officials ignored warnings from auditors that the Maryland site was critically flawed and not ready for primetime at the time it was to be launched, a decision that resulted in more Federal taxpayer money being wasted for no reason at all.
- Besides an investigation, the Congressmen also took the additional and much needed step to see if Health and Human Services could actually recoup some of the Federal funds from the state of Maryland since the funds never accomplished what they were supposed to do.
- Their state level Obama Care health exchange is also having serious problems with the entire Obama Care operation in Massachusetts having the lowest Obama Care enrollment results in the nation.
- Apparently the stress of failure is getting to the executives running this dismal state operation since The Boston Globe reported last week that the Massachusetts exchange director, Jean Yang, was reduced to tears during a board meeting that focused on the problems the agency was facing.
- The Massachusetts operation is currently trying to work through 50,000 paper applications.
- "These people came here to lead and innovate, and instead they're doing manual workarounds, and they are embarrassed to tell friends and family that they work for the Health Connector," Yang said, according to The Globe
And the most serious problem has probably not yet hit. If these three states are all like Massachusetts and are each working through tens of thousands of paper applications because of their website disasters, many people out there somewhere in America think they have health insurance today.
But in reality, their application for health insurance has not been processed yet. It is 45,000 from the top of the list. And that person, that 45,000th person is going to get deathly ill, find out the hard way they do not have Obama Care insurance, and the results could be fatal. That is the real disaster…in addition to squandering billions of dollars and years of prep time for nothing.
2) The Capitalism Institute recently provided an update of how many states around the country are fighting the implementation of Obama Care within their state borders:
- South Carolina is on track to become the first state that bans Obama Care altogether.
- Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma have introduced and/or passed similar legislation with more states to come.
- Multiple legal scholars and Constitution experts agree that states do, in fact, have the right to ignore Obama Care‘s tenets and provisions.
- Many of the country’s top doctors and hospitals are opting out of the legislation.
- This includes well over 70% of doctors in California.
And that is a true measure of how bad this law is.
3) We will close today’s review of Obama Care disasters with a little nostalgia. Back in 2010, my favorite politician of all time, Nancy Pelosi (and I say that with the deepest sarcasm possible) enlightened us by telling us how wonderful Obama Care was going to be: “It’s about jobs…It will create 4 million jobs, 400,000 almost immediately. And this legislation is about innovation, it’s about prevention, it’s about wellness."
Fact check:
- It has not created a net gain in jobs, it has been a job killer. We have previously chronicled how over 300 entities have already cut jobs, cut hours, and cut hiring as a result of the legislation.
- Employers are scared to death of what Obama Care will do their profitability and survivability so they are keeping a lid on their fixed costs such as salary and not investing in their businesses or themselves or hiring more people.
- The Obama administration rarely sees monthly job creation at levels above 150,000, never mind 400,000 immediately and 4 million in total.
- We have seen zero innovation from this law. In fact, its bungling of the website development, despite over $600 million and three years lead time, would be the furthest thing imaginable away from innovation.
- There is very little in the legislation with regards to prevention and wellness, it is primarily about wealth redistribution from the younger generation to the older generation in order to pay for the whole process. If there are positive aspect of prevention and wellness within the bill, how come Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are not upfront touting those benefits?
- And even if those aspects exist, there are no good to anyone if Obama Care policies continue to be so expensive since no one can afford them and thus, cannot avail themselves of what little wellness and prevention there is.
Lies, deception or ignorance? You decide. But we all now know that the color of the sky in her world when she uttered these words is certainly different then the storm clouds in our skies today, all because of Obama Care.
More bad news tomorrow.
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