Washington Post: #obamacare exchange flunked pre-launch testing. *Grotesquely*.

So, if the story’s from the Washington Post, then why am I picking Talking Points Memo as the go-to link for this story?

Federal health officials went ahead with the Oct. 1 launch of Obamacare’s online health insurance marketplace despite a failed test days before, the Washington Post reported Monday.

Government officials and contractors ran a test to see whether the web portal could handle traffic from tens of thousands of users simultaneously, and the site crashed after a simulation in which only a few hundred tried to log on at the same time, according to the Post.

Continue reading Washington Post: #obamacare exchange flunked pre-launch testing. *Grotesquely*.

Is the best #obamacare exchange deal more than $400/year than your current plan? Then eat the tax.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal noted something in passing that struck me:

In California, for the Silver plans offered by Anthem Blue Cross and Kaiser Permanente, the monthly premium for a family of four is nearly $1,000. As one potential online enrollee tweeted, “It didn’t even show me Gold (plan). Probably figure I’d have a heart attack right there.” It did show the bronze plan, at a cost of about $750 per month — along with a whopping $5,000 deductible and out-of-pocket expenses of 40 percent.

It’s much the same in Nevada, with bronze plans ranging from $582 to $745 monthly, and deductibles as high as $6,300 with 40 percent out-of-pocket expenses. And regardless of whether you need an individual plan or a family plan, even with a subsidy, you are looking at a huge increase in premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, with stringent limits on care. Beyond the technical glitches, these plans don’t make financial sense for many individuals and families. It will make far more financial sense to buy a non-Obamacare compliant plan and pay the penalty tax. People will figure that out soon enough — and they won’t be happy about it.

(Bolding mine) In 2014, the Obamacare tax penalty will be 1% of taxable income above $10K.  Assuming a median household income of $50K, that means that if the price differential between an Obamacare-qualifying plan and an existing/potential non-Obamacare is more than $400/year, it makes sense to eat the tax (and vote Republican in November).  And apparently the government didn’t really take into consideration the possibility that rates were going to skyrocket enough in their Potemkin Village of a marketplace.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch… Illinois, Florida lack trained #obamacare guides.

But surely this won’t be a problem:

Illinois’s health-insurance marketplace said that it had only certified 100 of the planned 1,200 navigators by this past Saturday, but hoped to have “hundreds more” ready by Tuesday. Most Illinois navigators have completed their state training and background checks, but the online system that they use to complete the required federal training only recently became available, a situation which is, according to spokeswoman Kelly Sullivan, “not unique to Illinois.”

In Florida, as of last Wednesday, only 11 of roughly 150 navigators had received their state-level licenses to assist people in signing up for that state’s exchange, and only 57 had even applied for it. According to coordinators for the program, at the University of South Florida and the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, the delay is due to the federal online training system’s being crash-prone.

…Computer problems, you say? – Or, rather, the federal government failed to say.  Until now.

Moe Lane

PS: Look… if you have the opportunity to renew your policy early, you might want to do that unless your current one is really bad.