Obamacare / Affordable Care Act : classic or dud?

from the insurance industry:

“Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the law could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumers. Premiums have already been set for next year based on an assumption of when consumers will be transitioning to the new marketplace. If now fewer younger and healthier people choose to purchase coverage in the exchange, premiums will increase and there will be fewer choices for consumers. Additional steps must be taken to stabilize the marketplace and mitigate the adverse impact on consumers.”

and they have a point. it seems like the obama administration's political attempt to soothe the concerns of those whose shitty insurance no longer meets the bare minimum requirements for coverage under the new law could have financial ramifications for those who have already purchased insurance on the exchanges.

Anyone who's ever done a widespread implementation across multiple systems with competitive constituencies knew that this shitshow was going to happen. Nobody does this well--not Amazon, not Facebook, not Snapchat, not Obama, not anyone. Anyone remember this? And yet the planes keep flying.

The only thing that matters in the short term is that the ACA passed and is being implemented. It's not going anywhere. It's going to take years for people to fall in love with it or become consciously dependent on it. I'm trying to think of a government program with this kind of scope that's ever been scrapped.

Digby's right.

xp

and the state insurance regulators, singing the same song:

"This decision continues different rules for different policies and threatens to undermine the new market, and may lead to higher premiums and market disruptions in 2014 and beyond."

god, what an unforced fuckup.

clearly the Democrats don't have the stomach to wait it out until this thing is running smoothly, that's why I tend to think the whole thing is doomed

Tried to apply for assistance and shop for healthcare plans this week, since my open enrollment period at work ends tomorrow. Went through the whole assistance application, but apparently none of it applied to me and my family. But when I was finished with that, I was unable to shop for plans. I kept pressing all the buttons, signing out and back in again, refreshing pages. Nothing worked. It sucked. I tried. Oh well.

See? How can anyone ultimately complain about CYA compromises and retrofits when that is the reality people are dealing with? It's just a total, how you say? Cock up.

i assume the contractors will reimburse the federal government for their "work" on this (he says, laughing)

So with the reversal - does that negate stuff like a compulsion to cover people with pre-existing conditions and the like, kids on their parents' plan, all those changes made? And is there an expiration to this extension of old plans?

No. Yes, 1 year.
There's already been A LOT of migrating people to new plans from their current nonACA plans. Would've been nice if Obama didn't wait til nearly December to announce this shit, christ.

i know talking about messaging is an eyeroll inducer, but seriously, what's up with everyone being totally cool with calling this latest thing "the Obamacare FIX"? first, the thing that the "fix" is supposedly addressing - the fact that some people with shitty insurance have to change insurance plans to something that's not an insult - is not something that is broken or unanticipated. lawmakers knew this was coming, presumably, although i can see why they weren't jumping out of their boots to trumpet the fact to constituents. but calling it a "fix" implies that it was broken, and that's not the case. the aspect of obamacare that is broken, in the meantime - HealthCare.gov - isn't impacted by this "fix" at all.

I guess it sort of fixes the problem that these people who are losing their crappy plans can't start up a new plan. I don't know how well it fixes this problem and surely it will have other negative consequences as well, but presumably it will alleviate the fear that they will be left without insurance.

BOB's ACA vs. junk insurance. oh well

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/insurance-company-using-obamacare-scare-tactics-to-sell-crappy-insurance

After yesterday's fit I'm not gonna worry about it. It's possible the bungling will whittle the president's "capital" but that's not our problem, is it? Every day more people enroll. When the website is fixed, more will enroll. If ACA works I don't give a shit how low Obama sinks in polls.

plus there'll be the fun of HRC "distancing" herself from him

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2001/02/curtis.htm

I entered the Kahiki, said to be modeled after a New Guinea men's meetinghouse, between a pair of twenty-foot-high Easter Island idols with flames spouting from their heads. Inside, after crossing a low bridge and passing through a damp grotto, I wandered into a series of dining rooms filled with thatched "dining huts." The main room, a conical structure with a towering ceiling, was presided over by an eighty-foot-high tiki goddess with glowing red eyes and a fireplace for a mouth.

rip

haha wrong thread

i'd like to see hillary run on medicare for all, but who knows

medicare for all AND Tiki Bars for all

and electric car chargers to replace a gallonagas

and student loan debt jubilee!

whoa the website works for me now

let The Corner know!

i feel like i should ask you the sort of questions near death experience people get asked

when you got into the website, was there a warm feeling of glowing light? were all your old friends there waiting for you?

tbh it did feel kind of magical

pages even load fast

this is Obama's gotcha moment - HAHA IT WORKED ALL ALONG, FOOLED UUUUUUU

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/16/can_we_trade_obama_for_nixon/

what a stupid article

well it's by the film critic who wrote that The Counselor was the worst ever.

it was just a month ago that the GOP had fatally wounded itself for the '14 elections, amirite?

The circus cycle is neverending and nothing has changed since the Clintonistas destroyed the last progressive vestige of the Dem party.

ouch, oregon hasn't enrolled a single user . . . but "has received about 18,000 paper applications, at 19 pages each, and is scrambling to manually file and clear them"

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/once-leader-oregon-exchange-struggles-132443462.html

the headline is stupid, the article makes some good points.

xp - i am one of those 18,000 paper applications! and i felt so accomplished even getting to the point where i could even turn it in, agh

Officials Were Warned About Health Site Woes

The McKinsey report found that the effort was at risk because of issues including “significant dependency on external parties/contractors,” as well as “insufficient time and scope of end-to-end testing,” and “parallel stacking of all phases,” all predictions that have turned out to be accurate. Briefings on the report were held in the spring at the White House and at the headquarters of the Health and Human Services Department and for leaders at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, congressional investigators said.

...

House Republicans have latched on to a final report by the Mitre Corporation, one of the main firms hired to assess the security of the site, which said on Oct. 11, 11 days after the site went live, that it was “unable to adequately test the confidentiality and integrity” of the health exchange. Mitre went on to say that a “complete end-to-end testing” of the site “never occurred.”

Important:

...And it is unclear how many fixes remain to be made, because the list keeps changing.

This issue (which is very common in software development) is going to make things complicated for the near term.

walkercare: "a plan that allows Walker to reject Obamacare and turn down federal money offered to help states pay for expansion of Medicaid [but] also may make it possible for Wisconsin to still provide health coverage to many of the state's poor and working poor residents"

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/11/19/246003602/wisconsin-chooses-its-own-path-to-overhaul-medicaid

"will cost state taxpayers an additional $460 million through 2020..."

Yeah, but that's $460 million of their money, not taken from the stupid tax-and-spend government! Oh wait, I mean, look over there ... !

(runs away)

the funny part about that quote is the idea that walker gives half a shit about wisconsin's "poor and working poor residents"

"will cost state taxpayers an additional $460 million through 2020..."

― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, November 19, 2013 2:28 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the price tag of self-reliance

So, uh, no surprise: health care site works where states allow exchanges to happen.

the state sites work, not the fed one, right?

Federalism rearing its beautiful head.

federalism > feudalism

$174MM for the fed's broken website. I wonder what California paid.

Less contractors involved, less options needed

The backend theoretically would be way less complicated for sure.

So if every state built their own, would the fed one even be needed?

yeah I don't think so.

maybe it says in the FAQ

http://obamacarefacts.com/insurance-exchange/california-health-insurance-exchange.php

yeah the oregon article posted above indicates that the states with their own websites are running them independently of the federal version. oregon is working with oracle on its (non-functioning) website, and in the past week they've taken down their claim that online registration should be working by the end of the month. instead they're pointing people to PDF applications and local "application fairs."

Since google is giving the government all of our emails and stuff you'd think we could ask them to set up our health care website.