Posted on 10/19/2013 5:09:17 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
THIS is not the column about the Obamacare rollout I expected to write.
If you had told me, months ago, that weeks after the health care laws coverage expansion went into effect I would be writing about the problems its launch had exposed, I would have assumed Id be writing about rate shock, rising premiums and the disappearance of many cheap insurance plans.
I may be writing about those issues soon enough. But for now there is a more pressing subject: The online federal health care exchange, the heart of the Obamacare project, is such a rolling catastrophe that it may end up creating a major policy fiasco immediately rather than eventually.
If the fix-it effort moves too slowly, its possible to envision a worst-case scenario unfolding. If the Web site doesnt work soon, even liberals concede that the mandate would have to be delayed, because you cant very well fine people for failing to buy a product they cant access. And that combination a hard-to-navigate online portal and no penalty for staying uninsured could effectively discourage all but the most desperate customers from shopping, which in turn would create an unsustainably expensive insurance pool, driving prices up and driving people away, and potentially wrecking the entire individual insurance market in short order.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You make a good case for the author and I will keep an open mind. However, what is clear is that the ACA is a disaster for my kids and grand kids. I will hold no quarter for its Marxist supporters in the media and government.
God bless you and your family.
When Cruz is the 2016 nominee will Christie, McCain, King etc endorse him? If so, what will be their excuse for doing so?
I would hope he would say “ you were against me before you were with me”
So no thanks I don’t need or want you.
I am in his camp. I expected the main Obamacare story to be sticker shock and policy based. And I also expected that while the health insurance market would eventually collapse (since I believe that is what the Democrats intended), I certainly didn't expect it to come crashing down so spectacurarly and so soon.
They can at least run on delaying/eliminating the individual mandate. Unless Obama beats them to it.
People not getting rebates can still buy insurance outside of the exchange. If the insurance pools are upside down then best to have that happen when there are fewer policies and before group plans are screwed up.
So far 19 states are participating in Medicaid expansion. If ObamaCare were to collapse and be repealed it's likely that Congress would question funding Medicaid expansion in less than half the states which would amount to punishing states that didn't participate.
One of the intents of Medicaid expansion—which was mandatory before the Supreme Court struck it—was to tie the future of state Medicaid funding to the success of ObamaCare. Expanded Medicaid also imposes an new set of federal regulations on participating states. These new regulations severely limit a state's ability to craft Medicaid to fit the unique requirements of their own residents.
These additional regulations were what caused a majority of states to baulk at expansion, not a desire snub Obama.
That would be a catastrophe of biblical proportions. Millions of Americans have lost their health insurance coverage as of 1/1/14, the insurance plans they had no longer even exist or would much more expensive do to coverage requirements.
They can mess with Medicare (Medicare needs to be older not younger) but the SCOTUS said Obama can't mandate states to raise income eligibility levels for Medicaid - yay!
This is BIGGER than a bread box - companies 86'ing healthcare plans, newly uninsured employees not able to sign up for Obamacare, younger adults NOT getting insurance, opting to pay the fines rather than the outrageous premiums and deductibles [if any fines at all, if the web sites don't work], insurance companies raising rates constantly as they do not see the numbers of enrollees they were expecting, come Jan. 1st, uninsured NOT getting healthcare because they were unable to enroll, etc. ...
Exactly.
You pay a Tax on Nothing, which is really a Penalty, which the Supreme Court said was Unconstitutional unless you call it a Tax.
Yes, I know....
If it's 2000 pages long, and it's from the government, it couldn't possibly contain anything useful.
The whole idea is to get "pages" out of healthcare delivery!
The OCare web sites and call centers must have been designed by the same geniuses in charge at the Fulfillment By Amazon “service.”
Not sure where you’re going with that.....
Thanks, Oldecon. I have a cold today so I’m laying up and not going to Mass. I almost never do that. Don-o’s reminding me to get back to bed and not spend all of the Lord’s Day on the ‘puter!
God’s blessings to to you and yours.
Really? The Tea Party knew they’d botch the web site THIS badly? I find myself skeptical. This is legendary incompetence...not merely run of the mill, or exceptional incompetence.
There I was, on the road to Damascus, when this blinding light showed me the truth. The exudation holding my eyes half open released, and my eyes came open. I could see reality.
My drunkenness was gone. In the sober light there on the road was the revelation. I had been wrong. The future viewed through veiled eyes was a lie.
What am I to do? Must I atone?
Not sure what your point is, but yes, I certainly knew that Obama Care would be this spectacular of a failure....always have known it.....and I have a long published archive proving it. I have said, many times, in print, on the air, in coversation, on message boards: Obama Care WILL Fail because it HAS to fail....there can be no other outcome.
Obamacare is an arbitrary and subjective form of redistribution, based on social justice. Computers don’t do social justice because computers are not arbitrary and subjective.
The Obamacare pushers knew this and tried to tell us that the Obamacare applications would all be hand written, all 20 pages. The Pushers told us that it was a matter of social justice that the applications be filed by hand because many of the poor do not have access to a computer. Maybe that was just a trial balloon. When that trial balloon didn’t go over, that is when they started working on the computer programming in earnest.
It might have worked better if the courts had let them force states to set up their own exchanges, with their own arbitrary set of rules, but that didn’t happen. This is a federal program, that requires a single set of rules across the country that is applied equally to everyone. That is the reason that Congress decided that all federal Congress people and their staffs apply for Obamacare in WA DC, so they would all be covered under the same rules.
My point is that he (like pretty much all of us) understood Obamacare itself would be a failure...but what he is surprised about is the extreme level of failure of the website...a point you differentiated yourself on.
Well yes, because e-commerce has exploded because it is bottom up commerce...but Obama Care is set up as top down e commerce, which is to say, a definite web disaster in the making. ....
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