Free Republic

If you wanted to build a case study in the perfect recipe for IT project disaster, you wouldn't have to look any further than the new official Obamacare website, Healthcare.gov. The site, which was supposed to be the official gateway for Americans to purchase cheap (now clearly up for debate) health insurance, has become an overnight poster child for just how bad the government can fumble a well-to-do technology implementation. The common symptoms are all present: budget overruns, too little time to test, poor design & planning, and you can take it from there. So when the President came out...

Reacting to the troubled rollout of President Obama's health care law, 10 Democratic senators led by New Hampshire's Jeanne Shaheen have signed a letter asking Obama to extend the enrollment period for individuals to purchase insurance through the new exchanges. However, not only would such an extension require an act of Congress (as I detailed in an earlier post), but it's likely to ruffle the feathers of insurers, who were counting on enrollment ending on March 31. Why would insurers be bothered? After all, wouldn’t they want to give Americans as much time as possible to purchase their product? Though...

If you’re looking for an epitaph for the republic (and these days who isn’t?) try this — from August 2010 and TechCrunch’s delirious preview of Healthcare.gov: “We were working in a very very nimble hyper-consumer-focused way,” explained Todd Park, the chief technology officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “all fused in this kind of maelstrom of pizza, Mountain Dew, and all-nighters . . . and, you know, idealism. That kind of led to the magic that was produced.” Wow. Think of the magic that Madison, Hamilton, and the rest of those schlubs could have produced if...

The technical disasters of the Obamacare exchange debacle over the past two weeks are not an accident, but rather a way to disguise the costs of healthcare plans and weed out people who don’t qualify for a federal subsidy, Forbes reports. Tech experts examining the Obamacare federal health exchange, Healthcare.gov, are becoming increasingly convinced that the traffic bottlenecks and site crashes experienced over the first two weeks were not by accident, wrote Forbes. An HHS spokesperson recently told The Wall Street Journal that implementation of a feature enabling users with the option to preview premiums was delayed as a way...

Healthcare insurance executives were received at the White House today — but not to confront President Obama about the flub-ridden exchange launched on Oct. 1. Instead, the CEOs of Aetna, Humana, CareFirst, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, Health Net, Inc., Health Care Services Corporation, Independence Blue Cross, America’s Health Insurance Plans, Molina Healthcare, Centene Corp., Tufts Health Plan, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Wellpoint and Kaiser Permanente got to meet with Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Meanwhile, on the Hill, Pelosi brushed off the tech implosion as something they just have to be able to fix because she doesn’t...

According to the White House, that March 31 deadline comes from language in the Affordable Care Act that says if one has access to affordable coverage but chooses to be uninsured for three consecutive months in a calendar year, one would face a penalty. The administration says in the insurance market, when consumers sign up before the 15th of a given month, their coverage starts on the first day of the next month: Sign up by February 15 to get coverage starting March 1; sign up after that date (but before March 15), and you won't be covered until April...

Amid mounting criticism, the White House said Wednesday that it plans to soften the deadline for when Americans are required to purchase health insurance. The date by when Americans would be penalized for not having signed up for health insurance could be “slid” back by as much as six weeks, administration officials told NBC News. But it was not immediately clear Wednesday whether the adjustment to a cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act would need to be approved by Congress or could be done by the Department of Health and Human Services administratively. As the law stands now, individuals are...

LINK ONLY PER FR POSTING RULES (GANNETT): http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20131023/NEWS01/310230009/In-3-weeks-just-35-enroll-Miss-insurance-exchange

Well, the good news is that HHS has actually tried to fix a few things on the Healthcare.gov website.  The bad news is that the fixes make the confusion and incompetence even worse.  After hearing a hailstorm of criticism over the necessity to completely enroll before seeing premium prices, HHS added a premium estimator on the front page of the website.  However, unless you are exactly 27 or 50 years old, the estimates you get will wildly undershoot what you’ll be forced to pay.CBS reports that industry analysts can’t believe what they are seeing:

Ben Neptun and his wife Charla are “furious” their family’s health insurance premium will be raised from $419 to $899 per month because of Obamacare. “We will absolutely go in a hole with this change,” Ben said. Ben, 36, and Charla, 34, are both home health nurses in Mobile, Alabama. They each make about $23 an hour and have spent the last year learning how to budget and recover from debt acquired in previous marriages. With a blended family of five—a 15-year-old, a 2-year-old, and a 10-month-old—Ben said “there’s no room for several hundred dollars extra per month” in their...

October 21, 2013 Group behind Obama at Rose Garden speech includes only 3 Obamacare registrants Caroline May Of the 13 people who flanked President Obama during his speech defending Obamacare in the Rose Garden Monday, just three had successfully registered for the new Obamacare exchanges.A list of the people who joined Obama on stage provided by the White House included people who have or “will” benefit from Obamacare, small business owners, representatives from “partner organizations,” and new registrants.The three people who were able to register included: Janice Baker, who introduced the president and as of last week was the only...

President Obama’s Democratic allies in Congress said Wednesday they are “not happy” about the glitch-filled rollout of the healthcare law, but criticized Republicans for trying to kill Obamacare rather than fix it. “It’s very disturbing to see that the website hasn't performed as well as we would like,” said Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), the No. 4 Democrat in the House, emerging from a private briefing with administration officials. “I think it's even more disturbing when individuals intentionally work against the American people and the rights that they have now secured to access quality, affordable health care.” “It's also not just...

".................The Canadian-owned company built the website, and in testimony from September 10, it told the skeptical House Energy and Commerce committee that things were going just great. To date, the FFM implementation has achieved all of its key milestones from the initial Architecture Review in October 2011 to Project Baseline Review in March 2012 and, most recently, the Operational Readiness Review in September 2013. Additionally, in April 2013, health insurers began submitting their plans to the system for review by CMS. Starting in August 2013, consumers were able to go into the system and register their accounts. At this time,...

In my column yesterday I explain that the Obamacare fail was baked in for political reasons, foremost among them, the need to keep the public from learning that the Tea Party critics were right. Obama knew he couldn't be re-elected if people learned what Obamacare was. He also knew it was not ready to be launched. The White House tactic was to keep the Obamacare regs and prices secret from the public, which meant the website could not be constructed properly. Each day brings more news proving the administration's political motivations that made failure inevitable and acceptable to them. Over...

President Barack Obama helped a pregnant woman who began to faint during his speech about health care reforms today, joking 'That's what happens when I talk too long.' Mr Obama reached out to catch prospective Affordable Care Act beneficiary Karmel Allison who was standing directly behind him as he discussed the glitches of the new healthcare website in the Rose Garden of the White House. Around 25 minutes into the speech, Ms Allison became unsteady and started to lose consciousness. At that point, the President turned around and helped catch her before she actually fainted. 'I got you. You're OK,'...

As consumers weigh coverage options available in the newly launched federal health insurance marketplace, three of the largest medical associations in Texas have raised concerns about the uncertainty of provider networks offered by health plans in the marketplace. “Physicians, they just want to know who's walking through their door and what kind of coverage they’re going to have,” said Lee Spangler, vice president of medical economics at the Texas Medical Association. “They’d like that uncertainty to be settled.” The uncertainty of the provider networks also creates a hardship for consumers, many of whom consider whether their current doctor is covered...

The National Republican Committee filed a Freedom of Information Act request Monday seeking the number of Americans who have enrolled in health care through the Obamacare website since the program was rolled out on Oct. 1. The White House has so far refused to release any information on the number of enrollees following the glitch-ridden rollout of the Obamacare website, leading Republican critics to accuse the administration of a cover-up. Politicians and pundits are also calling for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ resignation in the wake of the botched launch. “Kathleen Sebelius and the Obama administration spent hundreds...

President Obama said Monday his administration was spearheading a "tech surge" to fix the problems plaguing the online ObamaCare insurance exchanges. "We are doing everything we can possibly do to get the websites working better, faster, sooner," the president said, adding that the White House had recruited the "best and brightest" from the private sector to help tackle the technical problems. "No one is madder than me that the website isn't working as it should — which means it's going to get fixed," Obama declared. The president's reassurances come at a critical time for the president's signature program. Fear is...

Speaking from the White House Rose Garden on Monday morning, President Obama addressed the website glitches and delays that have plagued the initial rollout of the Affordable Care Act, declaring the “product” to be good and reminding his audience that the healthcare law is “not just a website.” Since its October 1 rollout, the online registry for the Obamacare health exchange has been beset by website glitches, long wait times, and clunky programming. “You probably heard the new website where people can apply for health insurance and browse and buy affordable plans in most states hasn’t worked as smoothly as...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Monday said there was "no excuse" for the cascade of computer problems that have marred the rollout of key elements in his health care law, but declared he was confident the administration would be able to fix the issues. "There's no sugarcoating it," Obama said. "Nobody is more frustrated than I am." The president said his administration was doing "everything we can possibly do" to get the federally run websites up and running. And he guaranteed that everyone who wants to get insurance through the new health care exchanges will be able to....