MD Health exchange to offer retroactive coverage [sausage making is exposed and ugly]

....Gov. Martin O'Malley plans to announce the option Tuesday, the day lawmakers scheduled briefings on the exchange's performance and on a different plan to give coverage through a state-backed health plan to thousands of uninsured who were thwarted by technical problems from enrolling in time to get coverage by Jan. 1.....

....The new plan will not replace the one to allow those without coverage temporarily into the Maryland Health Insurance Plan, which comes with its own premiums, deductibles and copays. The high-risk pool was created years ago for people who could not get private insurance because of pre-existing conditions.

....the administration will still offer the MHIP plan "as a basic safety net." It requires passage by the General Assembly as emergency legislation.

..."He didn't tell the people of Maryland when he knew ahead of time that this would fail,".. Gansler said Brown needs to tell the public what happened to the $107 million used to build the exchange.

"In order to fix the problem, we have to know what happened,".."We need to make sure people get access to health care."....

...Republicans have called for a special committee with subpoena powers. And some Democrats have said an investigation would be launched once the site is running properly.

State Sen. Thomas "Mac" Middleton...called for a briefing from state and exchange officials after a hearing on the MHIP emergency legislation... "there will be plenty of questions," but that it was not the time to investigate what went wrong. That would happen down the road.........Brown also pledged a full investigation after the website is running smoothly."That's something that will be done, but right now we don't want to divert attention" away from problem solving, Brown said. "We are making progress, but we're not satisfied until we enroll more and more Marylanders."

A startling rundown of the total breakdown of the MD state exchange and a look at how the politicians are trying to sweep this sausage making failure under the rug.

No "customer" can follow this but the Democrats must continue to enroll to keep Obamacare viable, regardless of the total disaster that we are watching unfold.

Jan 13, 2014 - Baltimore Sun: Politics trumped prudence in Md. Obamacare exchange [Editorial] "The train wreck of Maryland's Affordable Care Act insurance exchange should have been no surprise to Gov. Martin O'Malley, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown or anyone else responsible for its creation. That's the unmistakable conclusion from a Washington Post article on Sunday based on not-previously disclosed documents and interviews with key participants. The Post's report fleshes out the story of dysfunction revealed in records obtained last month by The Sun through a public information request and leaves no doubt that state officials were warned repeatedly and in detail that the website was, in one former official's words, "a disaster waiting to happen." The more of the picture we see the clearer it becomes that political considerations trumped prudence — and that Marylanders in need of quality health insurance paid the price.

Much of the Post report by Aaron C. Davis and Mary Pat Flaherty relies on audits, letters, emails and other documents to or from the Portland, Maine-based firm BerryDunn, which was paid $9 million to provide oversight for the development of Maryland's exchange. Among the highlights:..........."

Jan 13, 2014 - Byron York: Will IRS bully people to sign up for Obamacare? ".........The main leverage the IRS will have is the refund "offset." That simply means if a taxpayer is due a refund, but has also incurred an Obamacare penalty, the penalty will be subtracted from the refund. So a taxpayer who has a $500 refund coming but incurs a $695 Obamacare penalty will receive no refund.

In addition, that taxpayer might face a letter and a phone call — or a series of them — from the IRS telling him to pay the rest. Anyone who has received a letter or phone call from the IRS knows the experience can be quite intimidating. Or, in the words of the administration's Supreme Court brief: "Offsets, correspondence, and phone calls are consistently some of the most productive tools in the federal tax collection process."

Will the government really do that? The answer is not clear, or at least not publicly clear. (In response to inquiries, IRS officials sent boilerplate, non-enlightening clips from IRS publications.) But the administration's level of aggressiveness will likely be determined by how many Americans voluntarily comply with the law.

Obamacare needs a lot of them to survive. In the last few months, discussion often focused on the prediction that the system needed to enroll seven million people by the time open enrollment is over at the end of March. But even if Obamacare reaches that goal — and it's doubtful right now — that is just the start. To work, Obamacare must keep growing. A lot. ........."

Once government finds the ultimate solution to the RIGHT to health care and insurance, or the appearance that health care is such a right as to be FREE, one begins to wonder what the next manufactured right will be?

We are already on course to be married to whomever and whatever.

I’m talking about what is, as yet unanounced future think.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.