A ‘quirk.’
There’s another quirk in the Obama administration’s new health insurance system: It lacks a way for consumers to quickly and easily update their coverage for the birth of a baby and other common life changes.
With regular private insurance, parents just notify the health plan. Insurers will still cover new babies, the administration says, but parents will also have to contact the government at some point later on.
Right now the HealthCare.gov website can’t handle such updates.
Why do I have the feeling that whoever wrote this doesn’t have kids? – Because the problem here is that changes in family or income status will have an immediate (in government terms) effect on federal Obamacare subsidies; which should behoove the administration to have made sure that they were prepared for any problems. Because there will be problems, and people will not be amused if the government keeps billing and crediting their accounts out of nowhere.
Come, I will reveal a Mystery to you: people do not crave lower costs out of their healthcare. They want them, but they do not crave them. What they crave is reliability. What they want is to know, down to the last cent and procedure, what they can get out of their insurer when the crisis hits. They don’t want to see a monthly note from their provider, or HHS, and instinctively feel dread at whatever hoops they’re now going to have to jump through this time. They don’t want that; but thanks to Obamacare, they’re going to get that.
Just remember, though: NO REPUBLICAN VOTED FOR OBAMACARE.
Via @MaryVought.
Moe Lane
PS I wish that more people in the Obama administration had read HP Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror In Literature (“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”) or Terry Pratchett’s Feet of Clay (“People believe they want justice and wise government but, in fact, what they really want is an assurance that tomorrow will be very much like today.”). Heck, I’m not sure that any of them have. And dear God, but it shows.
#WarOnFamily
HA! “Just notify the healthplan” my hieny! I have had three and there was nothing about “just notify.” That was its own set of headaches – with private insurance – that included transmitting and mailing hard and soft copies of the birth certificates – LONG FORM – within 20 business days (or some such) otherwise said kid would NOT be insured and we would be on the hook for the entire hospital bill. So, I can just imagine how much of a headache/heartache/heartburn this will be through the government site today. Heck, it would be a major ordeal if the whole system was as efficient as say, the VA or Medicare – and it isn’t.
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Good luck all you new parents.
Or even if they’ve read Dune, “Fear is the mindkiller” Looking at the rest of the economic policies, on the other hand, it looks like many of them were implemented on purpose. “Temporary” tax cuts the dragged out annually, so tax planning was useless. For the last 4 years the sword of Damocles over the head of most businesses of O-care. Ruling by royal edict of Executive Orders and the regulations that were/are created by the bureaucracy.
Any small or medium sized business have gone into a mental clinch things loosened up a bit when the tax rates became “permanent”, but no one has relaxed because they don’t know when the next shoe is going to drop.
Or that you got married, or that you moved, or just about any other change in you status for that matter. Should be interesting when someone dies and the Feds starting sending them warnings to go see their doctor or else. Can they penalize you for dying under O’bamacare?
“Why do I have the feeling that whoever wrote this doesn’t have kids?”
Thank goodness.
They shaved off the “change of life” notifications in a vain attempt to make the deadline.
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I simply cannot comprehend how badly they executed this. I get that determining insurance rates is a complex subject, but… that shouldn’t have been the task for this site. It should have collected the data, wrapped it up, submitted it to the relevant insurance agency sites, and then presented the results. The insurance companies already HAVE high-volume systems for determining their rates; in any case THEY ARE THE SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS.
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(As a side benefit, that model would have STARTED with a validated “backend”.)
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It’s not just that the whole Obamacare “law” is a joke, the whole thing was incompetently managed from the beginning and is STILL being incompetently managed.