Posted on 11/19/2013 11:45:35 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Skip to 3:15 in the video below for the key bit. We’re 50 days removed from launch and Chao’s spent hours upon hours testifying about the website before Congress over the last few weeks. And somehow only now are we hearing about this.
Am I awake?
It's just mind-boggling. If the payment system isn't even built, how in the world did HHS or the WH think this thing could go live on Oct 1?
— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) November 19, 2013
Two things as you watch. First, note that Chao’s talking about the entire online exchange apparatus here, not the front end of Healthcare.gov where people sign up. The front end is in place and being repaired, he says. It’s the back end that … hasn’t completely been built yet. Second, it sounds initially like he says 60-70 percent of that back end is missing, but then he appears to correct that in the last minute or so. I’ll be conservative and assume it’s the later number that’s accurate. Regardless: How does the enrollment process work if the payment system hasn’t been finished yet? Remember, even if you’re one of the chosen few who managed to complete the sign-up process, your coverage doesn’t take effect on January 1 unless you make your first premium payment by December 15. You could make that payment directly to the insurer, bypassing the federal website entirely, but some segment of people won’t do that, whether because of absent-mindedness or their understandable assumption that payment should be made through the same site they used to enroll — i.e. Healthcare.gov.
It’s not just enrollees and insurers who are having trouble with payment either:
Add insurance brokers to the list of people stymied by HealthCare.gov…
Brokers say their clients are having trouble entering the right ID numbers in the balky website — and that’s what’s needed for the health plan to pay them…
In the chaotic days after the rollout of HealthCare.gov, many brokers were told by call center operators that they could not, or would not, enter a broker’s identification, or the “national producer number.” In other cases, the numbers seemed to be recorded — but then they got caught up in the problems with the corrupted “834” files that the exchanges send to the health plans with enrollment information.
Here’s the other part of this. One of the key points that O-Care critic Bob Laszewski has stressed all along is that the front end of Healthcare.gov shouldn’t be fixed until the back end is. The back end is where an applicant’s information, including payment information presumably, is transmitted to the insurer he signed up with. Because of the “834″ problem mentioned in the excerpt above, much of the info received thus far by insurance companies from the federal website is garbled or incomplete. That problem is manageable, says Laszewski, as long as the number of enrollments is low; if there’s only a trickle of bad data flowing in, insurers may have the time and manpower needed to correct it piecemeal. If, however, the front end of the website is fixed and enrollments pick up precipitously, the trickle turns into a flood and suddenly insurance companies are overwhelmed with garbled data. Listening to Chao here, it sounds like CMS is setting itself up for precisely that problem — they’re desperate to finish the front end first in order to get “young healthies” on the rolls ASAP, but they haven’t even begun to build part of the back end of the site. How bad, exactly, are things on that back end right now? What happens if the White House convinces hundreds of thousands of people to sign up before December 15 and then their new coverage isn’t there for them on January 1 because of a catastrophic breakdown on the non-public part of the site? Even if the coverage is there, what about the payment of subsidies that lower-income people are relying on to make their coverage affordable?
Exit question via Philip Klein: “If — as per Chao — payment system still needs to be built, has anybody fully enrolled in Obamacare?”
CMS tech officer: Roughly 30-40% of the ObamaCare exchange system still needs to be built — including the payment system
I guess Michelles classmate who landed the original contract is lounging on a beach somewhere?
kill it, kill it dead
This is incredibly important. It means Obamacare can’t work for months.
Humpty Dumpty
Doing the math here...
If 640 million dollars wasted so far has only gotten us 30-40% complete; then just implementing the website will easily reach some 2 billion dollars.
Then the obama will really hit the fan.
Ah well. The good news it - this bunch of barack will be repealed soon.
Greta Van Sustren interviewed a Washington Post reporter last night about his story on multiple project failures by CGI and it's US subsidiary. He and Greta kept posing the question "Given the track record, how did this contractor secure the contract and continue to secure additional government contracts?"
Neither of them mentioned that Michelle's classmate was a high muckety muck at CGI. I did a LOT of screaming at the TV.
RE: kill it, kill it dead
“They stab it with their steely knives but they just can’t kill the beast...” ( HOTEL CALIFORNIA — The Eagles )
RE: If 640 million dollars wasted so far has only gotten us 30-40% complete
I am getting conflicting news about the total amount spent so far... from 300 to 400 to now 640 million dollars.
How much really of our tax dollars have been spent on this boondoggle? is there a reliable source?
Sweet deal if you can get it.
So far, Oracle Corporation is failing even worse with the Oregon exchange website (not a single enrollee).
http://www.thelundreport.org/resource/technology_delays_plague_cover_oregon
Little trivia for ya. "steely" was a tip-of-the-hat to Steely Dan, who shared the same agent with the Eagles. I always thought that adjective sounded strange there.
Rush and others have been commenting on the 640 M costs.
Naturally Media Matters is denying it.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/24/the-myth-of-the-634-million-obamacare-website/196585
And when they do get around to making it “work” it will be so full of security holes.
What the he!! are they building. This sounds very familiar...
Does “Colossus: The Forbin Project”(1970) pop into your mind? Computers unite to form government/one world order. Fiction becomes life with oh dark won’s help
my experience with programming and coding is that 20% of your time goes into building your program, and 80% of your time goes into troubleshooting and fixing problems.
Seems like they have a ways to go if they are still in the building stage.
So, another $400 million and we should be ready to try again?
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