Posted on 10/23/2013 12:19:32 PM PDT by kristinn
Robert Laszewski is president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, a policy and marketplace consulting firm that has him working closely with many in the heath industry as they try to navigate the Affordable Care Act, as well as the author of the excellent Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review blog. As such, he has a unique view on how the rollout looks from the industry side. We spoke on Wednesday. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Ezra Klein: We last talked about 10 days ago. So in the interim, what are your insurance industry sources saying has changed on HealthCare.gov?
Bob Laszewski: Really nothing. There are two sides to this coin. The numbers of people enrolling and then the problems in processing enrollment information between federal government and insurance companies. If I were spinning for the White House I would say enrollment is up 50 percent! But that’s because it’s up from like 10 a day to 15 a day. I haven’t talked to large insurers seeing more than 100 enrollments a day.
On the backdoor, the 834 connections, I had one client tell me they saw some improvement in the error rate, so I checked with three other clients, and they said they hadn’t seen any improvement.
EK: So most people can’t actually buy insurance through the Web site yet, and those who can may not be sending the right data to insurers?
BL: I almost have the sense that HealthCare.gov is in de facto shutdown. Here’s why: Government has to fix the back end before the front end. The demand here is real. I don’t think anyone can dispute that millions of people want to sign up...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Blaming others for one’s own actions or inactions is a direct indicator of someone who refuses to take responsibility for their own actions or lack of actions.
Two year old children often behave that way: Barry, Holder, Reid, Pelosi, Mrs. Bill Clinton, McCain - - - did I leave anybody out?
I wonder why president stampyfoot felt it was better to throw $600 million away on a simple sign-up website that still doesn’t work rather than simply take what Mitt Romney implemented seven years and adapt it for national use.
Oh, I can dispute that.
They have a gun in their face and/or have been kicked off their current insurance
and he makes it sound as if they are flocking to it because they’re so excited about it.
The only ones that are excited about it are those that think they’re going to get something for nothing.
Obama wants America to be a third rate nation in every respects. It is as if he is an answer to the annoyed British or Canadian socialists who came to America to get medical treatment.
I don’t doubt it. A lot of Medicaid people think it will average them up, and a lot of other Obama voters still think it will be free.
But no one who is working and has insurance wants in.
Perfectly true. But the "back end" in this case isn't a database, it's the legislation itself. Here's an example:
This [834] process is decades old. Every union and every self-insured employer who contracts with an insurance company uses it. It’s like a 74 Ford pick-up truck. There’s nothing complicated about it. People in the industry are shaking their heads over the errors they’re getting. They’ve been using this process for many years. No one has ever seen these kinds of errors before. No one has any idea where they’re coming from.
Here's a systems question so basic that every IT professional gets tired of hearing it: if it worked before, what changed? What served to change the relationships, the reporting, the established pipelines? The first place to look isn't the software, it's the underlying model. 0bamacare changed a very great deal of that. And by "changed" I mean "broke".
Hope and change. Give up the hope and embrace the broken.
The lawsuit settlement with The Post is for 300 word excerpts. That’s why the article was cut off where it was.
Millions want to log-on and get their free healthcare.
Once the site is working they’ll quickly be disabused of that notion.
It’s also being hacked and contaminated with malware...
AHHHH, I got nailed :)
it was good though!
For Ezra Klein at the WaPo to write this is a hint that the disaster is far bigger than even this gloomy assessment.
Not pretty and this is being put out by one of the most hardcore, MSNBC contributing, uber-lefties you can find. In essence by publishing the interview instead of reporting it, he is letting his source point out that the Administration has been lying about improvement.
I wonder how many unemployed software people are out there having their way with it.
So they’ve brought in a “turnaround artist” now to kick Sebelius to the side and try to get this thing working.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the turnaround artist they brought in was Mitt Romney?
If the American people want socialism, they ought to at least elect someone with experience running SOMETHING to implement it. Not a f$&%in’ community organizer.
Now they are just talking about the disastrous website. Wait until people get to sign up and are shocked by what happens next. People honestly think they were going to get free healthcare or free insurance.
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