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Obama Care will go down as the greatest failure of Barack Obama, a President with many failed policies. The evidence is overwhelming and has been covered often over the past three years in this blog:
- Avid, original supporters of Obama Care, the unions, now realize what a disaster it will be for its members and want out of it altogether.
- It’s runaway costs and failure to resolve the root causes of high health care costs in this country will add trillions of dollars to the national debt without taming health care costs.
- The original cost estimate of implementing the legislation is now more than three times higher just three years after the law was enacted.
- Obama Care’s business model and structure will cause the least wealthy in our society, the younger generation, to subsidize the most wealthy in our society, the Baby Boomer generation.
- The law is causing health insurance premiums to skyrocket for just about everyone vs. what is available today in the individual insurance market.
- Senator Max Baucus, an avid and original supporter of Obama Care, correctly called the whole legislation a “train wreck” many months ago, even before the latest screw ups occurred.
- The Congressional Budget Office officially predicts that up to 7 million Americans will LOSE their current health insurance as a result of Obama Care, the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do.
- The legislation is causing the nation to become a nation of part time workers as businesses cannot afford the penalties required in the legislation for full time workers.
- Doctors are retiring earlier than expected because of the many hassles of the legislation, putting more cost and access pressure on the health care industry in this country vs. what would have happened in the absence of this legislation.
- People are losing access to their current insurance options and are losing access to their current doctors and hospitals as a result of Obama Care.
- The rollout of the Obama Care online health insurance exchanges is nothing but an unmitigated disaster.
- The data systems support for the legislation has correctly been called an identity thief’s paradise.
- Training for people who will support the health insurance exchanges has been inadequate and has involved hiring people without doing criminal background checks on them before allowing them to access Americans’ private information (see identity thief paradise in previous bullet.)
- The law is so bad, that poltiicians in Washingotn want to break the law and exempt themselves and their staff members form certain aspects of the law.
And the most depressing part of this whole fiasco is that Obama Care hasn’t even been fully implemented yet. Many parts of it have been delayed into the future.
But these are all general findings. As bad as these bullet point findings are and how they prove beyond a doubt that this was the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington, they do not touch on the human aspect and wreckage that this legislation is raining down on Americans. Lost insurance coverage, lost hours as they are forced to become part time workers, and lost jobs are hitting American families hard.
To give you an idea of how hard, consider the following list of businesses, schools, and other organizations that have had to cut their workers’ hours in order to stay financially viable and comply with the idiotic regulations of Obama Care. Investors Business Daily published a document with over 300 employers who have cut hours because of Obama Care, a list that was published BEFORE the current rollout disaster sprung up over the past few weeks. (Note: the list does not include businesses that have stopped hiring or have put off expansion of their businesses as a result of Obama Care, i.e. the carnage is worse than just what has happened to the following companies).
As you go through this list, think about the hundreds of thousands of Americans that have already been negatively impacted by just these 313 companies’ reactions to the draconian tenets of Obama Care:
Houston County
Biola University
Bealls Inc. (Department Stores)
SeaWorld Entertainment
Palmer Place Restaurant
Salina Family YMCA
Middletown Township Public Schools
Sam Houston State University
Auburn Hills
Friendship Community (group home for adults with disabilities)
Meridian Public Schools
Michael Monti’s La Casa Vieja steakhouse
Hollywood Casino
Arizona State University
Mainesubway (Subway franchisee)
Finger Lakes Community College
Tsunami Surf Shops
Southern Illinois University
Vincennes
Mexican American Opportunity Foundation
Georgia Military College
Vcm Inc. (Subway franchisee)
Ball State University
Tom’s River
Forsyth Technical Community College
Wilkes Community College
Consolidated Restaurant Operations Inc
Dave & Buster’s
Philadelphia University
K-VA-T Food Stores
Three Rivers College
Bergen Community College
University of Alabama
Brevard County
Buca di Beppo restaurant chain
Hillsborough Community College
St. Petersburg College
Cherokee County School Board
Hancock County
Morgan County
Central Michigan University
NEMF trucking company
Henderson
White Castle
Shari’s restaurants
Carnegie Museum
Oneida Special School District
Scott County School System
Stewart County School System
Jim’s Restaurants
Christoper Savvides restaurant & catering co.
Minocqua-Hazelhurst-Lake Tomahawk School District
Trig’s Supermarkets
University of North Alabama
Fatburger
Lee County
Delta County
Bee County
Boundary County
Rutherford County
Lawrence County
Kenowa Hills Public Schools
City of Burlington Public Schools
Lion & Rose British Restaurant and Pub
MTC Inc. restaurant management
Millard School District
Pulaski Technical College
San Diego Community College District
Drury University
Cumberland University
Area Agency on Aging of Western Arkansas, Inc.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
CKE Restaurants Inc.
Kern County
Rancho Cucamonga
San Gabriel
Palm Beach State College
Santa Fe College
Tallahassee Community College
Parkland College
Clay County
DeKalb County
Eastbrook Community Schools
Floyd County
Highland
Indiana University
Ivy Tech Community College
Kosciusko County
Lakeview Christian School
Madison Consolidated Schools
Madison-Grant United School Corp.
Marshall County
Mississinewa Community Schools
Perry Central School Corp.
Shelbyville Central School System
Speedway Schools
Starke County
Wolfe’s Auto Auction
Spencer Community School District
Lexington Board of Education
Howard Community College
Russ’ Restaurant
Maritz Research
Blair Community Schools
Plattsmouth Board of Education
Little Falls Board of Education
Lake Township
Lebanon City
Mason
Scrambler Marie’s Restaurants
Westlake
East Penn School District
Southern Lehigh School District
Tredyffrin-Easttown School District
Kelly Professional Cleaning Services
Spartanburg Community College
Matagorda County
Wilson County
Murray School District
Nebo School District
Henrico Country School District
Lynchburg
Clyde’s Restaurant Group
Eminence Community Schools
Faribault
Martin County
Baldwin Public Library
Hayfield Community Schools
Rappahannock Area Community Services Board
Benton Community Schools
Pompton Lakes Board of Education
Sparta Area Schools
Brandywine Heights Area School District
Southern Utah Unversity
Arkansas State University
Texas Christian University
Maricopa Community Colleges
University of Arizona in Tucson
Long Beach
Circle K Southeast
College of DuPage
McHenry County College
Eastern Hancock School Board
Fayette County School Corp.
Fort Wayne Community Schools
Gibson County
Greencastle Community Schools
Hancock Madison Shelby Educational Services
Tipton County
Vigo County School Corp.
White River Valley School District
Zionsville Community Schools
Indianola Community School District
Tama County
Kansas Turnpike Authority
Republic Foods (Burger King franchise operator)
Birmingham
Dearborn
Iosco County
Tuscola County
Douglas County West Community Schools
Papillion-La Vista school district
Westside Community Schools
Carlie C’s
Sinclair Community College
Tipp City
Ephrata Area School District
Dallas County Community College District
Plano
Alpine School District
Deseret Industries (work training for war refugees)
Wise County School Board
Mount Horeb Area School District
Tehama County
Crawford County
Vanderburgh County
Campbell County Social Services Dept.
Dickenson County Public Schools
Grayson County
Strasburg
Wythe County
North Putnam Community Schools
Northwestern School Corp.
Taylor Community Schools
Hanover Township
Middletown Township
Cedar City
Dallas School District
New Mexico State University
General McLane School District
Blue Ridge Community And Technical College
Fountain Fire Dept.
North of the River Recreation and Park District
Charco Broiler
Durango
Mountain Del (Del Taco franchisee)
Daytona State College
Moraine Valley Community College
Bartholomew County
Delaware County
Northwestern Consolidated School District
Richland-Bean Blossom Community School Corp.
Clear Lake School Board
Ocean City
Kalamazoo Valley Community College
St. Clair Community College
Moberly Area Community College
Ralston School District
Springfield Platteview Community Schools
Community College System of New Hampshire
Franklin Township Board of Education
Waldbaum’s Supermarket
Cuyahoga Community College
University of Akron
Upper Arlington City School District
Firstaff Nursing Services Inc.
Lancaster County School District
Penn Manor School District
Susquenita School District
Regal Entertainment Group
Brigham Young University
Chesterfield Public Schools
Chippewa County
Tazewell County
Eastern Greene Schools
Portage
Vassar Public Schools
Richmond Public Schools
Spotsylvania County
Joe Bologna’s Italian Pizzeria & Restaurant
Clinton-Glen Gardner School District
Elmhurst College
Columbus State Community College
AAA Parking
Boone Community School District
Joliet Junior College
Van Buren Township
Mankato
Hudson Valley Community College
Five Guys Burgers and Fries franchise
Akron
Baldwin-Wallace University
Kent State University
Lakeland Community College
Youngstown City Schools
Lori’s Angels home care
Granite School District
Chesterfield County
Louisa County
Bowling Green State University
Medina City Schools
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Fairview Park
Shawnee State University
Miami Dade College
Putnam County
Cutchall Management restaurant company
Mount Ephraim Board of Education
CY Farms
Brunswick
Medina
Wytheville Town Council
Christopher Newport University
College of William & Mary
Norfolk State University
Virginia government (all other departments)
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Community College System
Virginia Dept. of Alcoholic Beverage Control
Virginia Dept. of Conservation and Recreation
Virginia Employment Commission
Washington County
Wytheville
Land’s End
Dept. of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services
Dept. of Motor Vehicles
George Mason University
James Madison University
Longwood University
Old Dominion University
Radford University
University of Mary Washington
Lomira School District
Lancaster County
Utah Valley University
Columbus
Illinois Valley Community College
Milford Township
New Baltimore
Omega Foods Inc. (Wendy’s franchisee)
Tallmadge
Treadwell Enterprises (Taco Bell franchise operator)
Lake County
Boca Raton
Rock Valley College
Royal Farms convenience stores
Fairlawn
Chesapeake College
Sugarcreek Township
RREMC Restaurants (Denny’s franchisee)
Cedar Falls
Kga Group (Subway franchisee)
Kean University
Stark State College
Youngstown State University
Community College of Allegheny County
Pillar Hotels & Resorts
PMTD Restaurants LLC (a franchisee of KFC)
Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches
Plainfield Park District
Bowlmor Lanes
West Perry School District
Lafayette School Corp.
All of this unnecessary anguish and hardship all because of a piece of legislation that was not well thought out, was rushed through enactment without proper vetting and analysis, and that has no chance of ever being successful because it fails miserably to address the root causes of our ever rising health care costs in this country.
313 companies, schools, and other organizations already slammed, hundreds of thousands of Americans, if not millions of Americans, already slammed, with more anguish yet to come.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
This is the third post in this month’s series on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. There is a lot to cover this month since October 1 marked the first day that Obama Care health insurance exchanges were open for business. Or not open for business, given what a disaster they were for the most part. And this was only a part of what we are learning about the worst piece of legislation ever passed by the Washington political class.
The first two posts in this series can be accessed at:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/10/october-2013-obama-care-disaster-update.html
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/10/october-2013-obama-care-disaster-update_7011.html
1) Six days after the health insurance exchanges started operating, CNBC reported that its insurance industry sources were reporting that as few as 1 in 100 applications on the Federal exchange contains enough information to enroll the applicant in a plan. Some of the problems involve:
- How the exchange’s software collects and verifies an applicant’s data.
- Some of the insurance companies involved with the exchanges are stating they are receiving incomplete data from the government’s website or that the files are corrupted and unreadable in some way.
- That means the people in every batch who haven’t provided enough or correct information must be contacted for additional data to ensure they qualify for the insurance they want to buy, all this despite the fact that the Federal government has already spent over $600 million on this website effort.
- Even worse, many people might think that they actually have competed the process and are secure in assuming they are covered for health problems when in fact their registration process never got finalized and they are, in reality, uninsured.
An industry expert summed up the problems in a very succinct way: “It is extraordinary that these systems weren’t ready,” said Sumit Nijhawan, CEO of Infogix, which handles data integrity issues for major insurers including WellPoint and Cigna, as well as multiple Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliates.
Extraordinary, unbelievable, disgusting would all be correct adjectives for a Washington effort that took three years and $600 million dollars to not work as promised. A 1% success rate, I could have done better even with my limited technical ability and done better for far less money.
2) Consider the following analysis of Obama Care health care costs that was done by the Americans For Prosperity organization using official Federal government press release data, keeping in mind that President Obama promised that Obama Care would save the typical American family about $2,500 a year in health insurance costs:
- According to the analysis and data from the Health and Human Services organization of the Federal government, health insurance rates for younger American men will increase by an average of a whopping 97% in 2014.
- The health insurance rates for American women won’t increase as dramatically, but will still increase by a still whopping 55 to 62%.
- In the worst possible cases, premiums will increase as much as 279% next year.
- However, these numbers are nowhere on the website. In fact, HHS and Secretary Sebelius are praising Obama Care saying these premiums are actually less. How could that be?
- Following in the footsteps of the crazy budgeting process in DC, HHS is actually using baseline health insurance premium analysis. Premiums are less than what the Congressional Budget Office originally predicted, so ObamaCare “saved” Americans money. Tell that to the individuals who will be paying more for insurance next year.
- Worse yet, supporters of ObamaCare argue that the premium increases don’t matter because individuals aren’t really paying these premiums. They’ll receive tax credits that offset the costs. That’s true…for some people. Individuals between 100 and 400% of the Federal poverty level will received tax credits to assist with the purchasing of insurance. But 400% of the federal poverty level is only $46,000 a year in income for an individual.
- That isn’t much comfort for a 27 year old that has to pay for these increased premiums yet doesn’t qualify for a tax credit. In Indiana, premiums will increase 53% for a 27 year old male and thousands of them won’t qualify for the subsidies. Only 44% of those between 21-30 years of age in Indiana even qualify for subsidies. In Arkansas, it’s even worse. Premiums are up 247 percent and 53 percent won’t qualify for a subsidy.
So much for Obama’s promise that an average family will see its annual health care costs go down by about $2,500. Not even close.
3) One of the very serious accusations of this whole Obama Care process is that it will be a paradise for identify thieves. Well, it looks like that fear might becoming a reality already.
A Minnesota insurance broker told the Star Tribune that he had recently received an email that contained a load of confidential information on more than 2,400 insurance agents, including info like names, Social Security numbers and business addresses.
The source of this identify theft bonanza? An unnamed staffer at MNsure, Minnesota’s new Obama Care health exchange online marketplace.
The MNsure employee had accidentally sent the email to the wrong person. Which is bad enough but why is such information being sent out on the Internet in an unencrypted format, even if it was sent to the right person?
The Star Tribune reported:
An official at MNsure, the state’s new online health insurance exchange, acknowledged it had mishandled private data. A MNsure security manager called the broker, Jim Koester, and walked him and his assistant through a process of deleting the file from their computer hard drives.
Koester said he willingly complied, but was unnerved.
“The more I thought about it, the more troubled I was,” he said. “What if this had fallen into the wrong hands? It’s scary. If this is happening now, how can clients of MNsure be confident their data is safe?”
Good question, how can anyone in America be sure their personal information is safe given that the minions in Washington have faulty computer systems up and not running that can be easily hacked for identify thieves’ easy usage and abuse?
4) 10,535 pages of final Obama Care regulations have so far been published in the Federal Register/ 10,535 pages. Does anyone think that 1) any sitting member of Congress read any of these pages, never mind all of them, 2) would have even understood them if they had read them, and 3) have any idea what negatively dramatic impact over 10,000 pages of Federal regulatory gibberish has on Americans and American businesses?
Before you answer these questions, keep in mind that two of the most important pieces of legislation passed by Washington in the past fifty years, were less than 34 pages long. The Voters’ Right Act was about two pages long and the Civil Rights Act was about 34 pages long but each had far more positive impacts than 10,000 pages of Obama Care regulations can even dream of having.
“Try to pare things down. Very few moves do a lot.” Over 10,000 pages of regulations is not paring things down and will accomplish very little.
5) The Washington Examiner recently ran an article that covered the results from a recent survey of 200 leading health professionals. In its national 2013 Health Care Survey of top health care professionals, Coupa Software (The company provides cloud-based finance applications for many of the nation’s health care providers and is especially focused on waste in the health care system) found that health care professionals are worried about a number of setbacks that the health law could result in. Asked to list the “negative impacts,” of which they could pick several, here’s what Coupa found:
– “Quality of health insurance policies will suffer.” - 53%
– “Quality of care will go down.” - %51
– “The law is overly complicated.” - 49%
– “Insurance exchanges will be poorly managed.” - 42%
– “The law still allows insurance companies to be the middleman.” - 37%
– “Too complex for businesses.” - 32%
– “Americans will die earlier.” - 19%
Other findings include both good and bad anticipated outcomes from Obama Care, with the bad severely outweighing the good:
- Their survey found that the health care professionals expect that many inefficiencies, such as unnecessary emergency room visits, will be fixed under Obama Care.
- While 93% of the professionals in the survey cited negative impacts, 74% also found positive outcomes from the law, the biggest being the availability of health insurance to those who don’t have it.
- Any specific support for the law is offset by the overall view of the law by the health care community since the poll found that 56% oppose most or all of Obama Care’s provisions, only 6% favor all of the law, and 38% favor most of it.
Overall, a bad omen when top health professionals see far more downside than upside on average, especially when a whopping one in five think that more Americans will die earlier as a result of Obama Care, the exact opposite of what the legislation intended. But unintended consequences has been a specialty of the Washington political class for a very long time.
A sign-up process that might not be fixable despite spending over $600 million on its development, higher premiums, high identify theft risk, 10,000 pages of probably non-decipherable regulations, and at least some doctors that think the legislation will kill Americans sooner rather than later. You cannot make this stuff up unless you are a Washington politician. More unbelievable fallout tomorrow.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Today is the second in what promises to be a long series of posts that look into the many negative ramifications of the rollout out of Obama Care. The first post yesterday showed how the law is raising the health care costs of many Americans, the exact opposite of what it is supposed to do. That post examined how badly the Federal government managed the development and rollout of the main website that was supposed to make signing up for Obama Care health care insurance so easy but which is turning out to be a nightmare.
The nightmare continues today:
1) A recent example of the negative impacts of Obama Care from the Heritage Foundation perfectly illustrated why Obama Care is failing to reduce health insurance costs. Tom Gialanella recently received a letter from his insurance company explaining that when Obamacare takes effect in 2014 his current health insurance premiums are going to go up 61%: “I went from $891 a month to $1,437 a month.“ Gialanella said.
Even worse, for his family of five, Gialanella’s current deductible would double from $4,000 a year to $8,000 a year. And that doubling is for the least expensive option under Obama Care.”
Gialanella said that in addition to being more expensive, his plan includes maternity and newborn care, which he doesn’t need: “My wife is 58 years old, and our youngest child is soon to be 18. We’ll be having no more children. That’s not a benefit that we would ever purchase nor need or be able to use.” And that kids, is a major failing point of Obama Care. It forces consumers not only to purchase health care insurance it forces them to buy and pay for aspects of health care that they will NEVER use.
This is like forcing a Florida resident to buy snow tires for a new car he will only use in Florida. This is like forcing an apartment dweller to own a lawn mower.
It makes no sense but it illustrates how poorly the political class in Washington thought through this legislation, or did not think through it all. Why should elderly Americans have to buy insurance coverage for maternity needs? Like much of Obama Care, it makes no sense.
2) Consider the sticker shock that two California families recently experienced as a result of Obama Care, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News:
Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.
Yet, like many other Bay Area residents who pay for their own medical insurance, they were floored last week when they opened their bills: Their policies were being replaced with pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new health care law.
Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four.
“I was laughing at Boehner — until the mail came today,” Waschura said, referring to House Speaker John Boehner, who is leading the Republican charge to defund Obamacare.
“I really don’t like the Republican tactics, but at least now I can understand why they are so pissed about this. When you take $10,000 out of my family’s pocket each year, that’s otherwise disposable income or retirement savings that will not be going into our local economy.”
Both Vinson and Waschura have adjusted gross incomes greater than four times the federal poverty level — the cutoff for a tax credit. And while both said they anticipated their rates would go up, they didn’t realize they would rise so much.
“Of course, I want people to have health care,” Vinson said. “I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.”
Surprises like this are cropping up allover the country as even Obama supporters are beginning to realize that when you start giving something away for free, Obama Care subsidized health care, there really is no free lunch, someone has to pay for the subsidies. And that someone is turning out to be every American family who will be paying more for a solution that has not chance of resolving anything.
3) I have very few computer technical skills. However, I am able to get hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annual counts on how many people have accessed this blog. I can find out how many people accessed each individual post. I can find out what country readers came from on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis. I can find out what computer operating system they used to access this blog in a whole slew of different ways. I used a canned blog program from Google to get this wealth of information.
However, despite spending well over $600 million on the Federal government Obama Care exchange website, Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathy Sebelius meekly stated this past week that more than a week after the exchange website went live, she was unable to tell the world one simple number: how many people had successfully enrolled in an Obama Care are Federal exchange insurance plan. A truly pathetic return for a $600 million investment.
4) Don’t believe the bad news about Obama Care that we have been discussing and reviewing for the past three years? Consider some main stream news sources and what they are saying about this unfolding disaster:
USA TODAY reports: “Over the first four days the new online health insurance exchanges were open last week, more than 8 million people visited them, according to the Obama administration. At the very least, this casts doubt on the Republican claim that Americans hate Obamacare and want it repealed. It seems millions of people desperately want the coverage the law will allow them to get, regardless of their medical histories. Alas, the administration managed to turn the experience for most of those visitors into a nightmare. Websites crashed, refused to load, or offered bizarre and incomprehensible choices. Even though the system was shut down for repairs over the weekend, Monday’s early reports continued to suggest an epic screw-up. Why have things gone so wrong? President Obama’s chief technology adviser, Todd Park, blames the unexpectedly large numbers of people who flocked to Healthcare.gov and state websites. ‘Take away the volume and it works,’ he told USA TODAY’s Tim Mullaney.”
Bloomberg reports, “Insurers are getting faulty and incomplete data from the new U.S.-run health exchange, which may mean some Americans won’t be covered even after they sign up for an insurance plan. While it’s not clear how widespread the problem is, the reports from industry consultants are the first hint that the technical troubles faced by consumers trying to enroll in health plans under the Affordable Care Act may also be hitting the insurers. The companies are receiving electronic files that can’t open or have so much missing information on new enrollees they’re unusable, the consultants said. Some insurers have been forced to fix entries by hand, said Bob Laszewski, an insurance-industry consultant based in Arlington, Virginia. … Since the exchanges opened on Oct. 1, consumers have struggled to access the online marketplaces, which have been overwhelmed by millions of visitors. While capacity was added this past weekend to a system meant to serve people in 36 states, the federal website continued yesterday to deliver error messages to potential customers trying to create accounts and shop for health plans.”
The Hill reports, “Problems plaguing online enrollment in Obama Care are not just due to high traffic, but are being compounded by structural problems at healthcare.gov, the federal government portal where people can shop for medical insurance. The Obama administration is now scrambling to fix technical troubles that contributed to a bruising debut last week for the new insurance marketplaces. ‘I think there’s growing consensus that it’s not just volume,’ said Caroline Pearson, a vice president at the consulting firm Avalere Health who focuses on the healthcare law. Healthcare.gov — the main portal for consumers in 36 states to compare their coverage options — was taken offline for maintenance over the weekend and was scheduled to come down for repairs again at 1 a.m. Tuesday. In addition to adding capacity to better deal with heavy traffic, the fixes included software upgrades and changes to the type of hardware used for certain functions, the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) said Monday. The initial problems with healthcare.gov mostly prevented users from creating an account — a prerequisite to comparing or buying insurance. That means few people have been able to even begin the process of shopping for coverage.”
“Epic screw up” from the USA Today report seems to be a nice summary of what is going wrong with this process, a process that should have been bug free given that it was three years in the making. This is what $600 million buys you when you allow an inept political class to operate an equally inept Federal government bureaucracy.
And to the best of my knowledge, despite scrambling to fix what is so broken, I have not seen very many reports that the system is any more stable, quicker, available, or accurate in transferring health insurance requests from the website to insurers. Pathetic.
Unfortunately, this is no where close to being the end of the bad news. More to come tomorrow and the next day and the next day…
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Although we took a few weeks off from discussing the disaster that is Obama Care, the overwhelmingly bad news that has occurred since its October 1, 2013 rollout requires us to revisit this disaster. It is failing in so many ways: nonfunctional software, higher costs for existing people with insurance, data integrity, identity theft, etc. that not to review its failings would be a disgrace.
There is so much news to cover that we will not go into as much detail of the fiascos as we might usually do, that would take weeks to get through. We will hit the highlights/lowlights to give a sense of why this atrocious piece of legislation needs to be either repealed or massively overhauled.
1) 34 states were so scared of Obama Care that they opted out of creating their own so-called health care exchanges, as allowed by the law, and passed that responsibility along to the Federal government. Unfortunately, as we and many others predicted, the Federal government has not been able to build as simple, functioning website to execute one function, allow people to sign up for health care insurance.
According to news reports, the Federal website fails to load drop-down menus and other critical elements for users that successfully gain entrance, often does not confirm if a person has actually successfully completed the sign up process, and generally prevents uninsured Americans in the states it serves from purchasing healthcare at competitive rates. For this basically nonfunctioning website, the American taxpayer has already paid over $634 million for basically nothing.
And as with all government contracts, it has managed to overrun its budget at $634 million, by an amazing factor of seven. When the company who won the contract to build the Obama Care Federal exchange website was identified back in 2011, the contract stipulated that the cost of development could be as high as $94.7 million. Thus, the Federal government has already spent seven times what the original cost estimate was and STILL does not have a working website. Disgraceful.
Consider two benchmarks of success against which we measure the failure of the Obama Care Federal exchange website. Facebook received its first investment in June 2004 and operated for a full six years before surpassing the $600 million mark in expenses in June 2010. Twitter was created in 2006, and spent only $360.17 million over the next five years until a $400 million investor boost in 2011.
These two complicated web efforts spent far less in more years than the Federal government has already spent with the distinction being that they were fully functional sooner and for far less money. But to say the political class can run government functions that are fully functional for far less money are words that have never been uttered.
2) But maybe the supporters and implementers of Obama Care should have known this was likely to happen all along, given how badly the main company who built the Obama Care Federal exchange failed in Canada, according to an October 10, 2013 story from the Washington Examiner.
That story reported that Canadian health officials last year fired the parent company of CGI Federal, the prime contractor for the problem-plagued Obama Care health exchange websites, for nonperformance and missed deadlines. CGI Federal’s parent company, Montreal-based CGI Group, was terminated in September 2012 by an Ontario government health agency after the firm missed three years of deadlines and failed to deliver the province’s online medical registry.
The online registry was supposed to be up and running by June 2011 but more than a year later was still not in operation. Other companies were eventually hired who were able to fix what this Obama Care data systems provider could not.
Three troubling issues here. Did someone in the Federal government procurement process know how incompetent this company was and still went ahead and awarded them the contract? The Federal government had three years to put this process and computer system in place, why did it fail so miserably on the first day and continues to fail? And finally, why did we send hundreds of millions of dollars to a foreign company? Were there no American companies that could have done the job? The whole episode smells of incompetence and shadiness.
3) We have previously reported on how many Americans are seeing the costs of their current health care insurance skyrocket as a result of Obama Care. The Heritage Foundation documented three recent examples of just how much those insurance costs are going up for Americans:
- George Schwab of North Carolina was recently notified in a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield on September 23 that his current health insurance plan doesn’t meet Obama Care’s benefit requirements and would have to be terminated at the end of the year. While Blue Cross did suggest a comparable plan, it was $980 more than what he now pays.
“The President told the American people numerous times that ‘If you like your current coverage, you can keep it,’” Schwab told The Charlotte Observer. “How can we keep it if it has been eliminated? How can we keep it if the premium has been increased 430 percent in one year?”
- Michael Yount and his wife, a retired couple in North Carolina, buy their individual insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield and pay about $380 a month with an $11,000 deductible.
But they were recently informed that their new insurance plan will be THREE times the price, costing them $1,124.50 a month, The Christian Science Monitor reported. The couple said they plan to drop out of formal health insurance, pay the penalty, and “self-insure.”
- Cindy Vinson in California “will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy,” reports the San Jose Mercury News. She is an Obama voter who was surprised by the personal impact of Obama Care. “Of course, I want people to have health care,” Vinson said. “I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.”
Who did she think was going to pay for it? Given that Obama Care does not resolve the underlying root causes of our high health care costs, all it does is move existing costs in an unworkable Rube Goldberg manner so that everyone pays more but the underlying problem and related costs never get resolved.
Losing a current policy, paying much more for a replacement policy, and going self insured, three things that any health care reform effort should not do but what Obama Care is doing.
4) According to a recent Washington Post story:
Major insurers, state health-care officials and Democratic allies repeatedly warned the Obama administration in recent months that the new federal health-insurance exchange had significant problems, according to people familiar with the conversations. Despite those warnings and intense criticism from Republicans, the White House proceeded with an Oct. 1 launch…Robert Laszewski, a health-care consultant with clients in the insurance industry, said insurers were complaining loudly that the site, www.healthcare.gov, was not working smoothly during frequent teleconferences with officials at the Department of Health and Human Services before the exchange’s launch and afterward. “People were pulling out their hair,” he said.
Which raises the question that if just about everyone knew this rollout was going to bomb, why did the Obama administration go ahead with a rollout that actually bombed? Could it be politics overrode common sense? If this aspect of Obama Care had also been delayed like many, many other aspects of the legislation that have already been delayed or terminated, it would have been a political nightmare for Obama. It would have provided further proof that the Federal government was unable to manage such a complicated, and unnecessary, process and that the associated legislation needed to be scrapped.
Thus, rather than do the right thing, the administration rolled out a disaster on a wing and a prayer, neither of which held up. Now the American taxpayer is probably paying big bucks for overtime, crisis fueled data programming resources in order to fix what never should have gone live. Americans who might actually have wanted to sign up for insurance may decide it is not worth the hassle even if the system is adequately fixed in the future since their first attempt to sign up was a frustrating failure. When politics overrides common sense there is never a good outcome.
Given all of the hassles, how many people have successfully signed up for Obama Care through the Federal process? No one knows and/or no one is telling. You can bet if this process was successful, the Federal government and Obama would be touting its victory. However, no touting has to mean no victory, for either the government, the American taxpayer, and the unresolved problem of high health care costs in this country.
We are just getting started, more to come on the following days on the unfolding Obama Care disaster.
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