exchanges – Page 2

One of @BarackObama’s #obamacare ‘success stories’ Jessica Sanford will have no insurance.

Oh dear God but the Democrats have not done right by this woman.

OLYMPIA, Nov. 17.—Jessica Sanford, the Federal Way woman who got a shout-out from President Obama last month with her fan letter for the Affordable Care Act, got a rather rude awakening last week. Turns out she doesn’t qualify for a tax credit after all.

At least that’s what the letter said that she got from the state. Now she says her dream of affordable health insurance has gone poof. She can’t afford it. She’ll have to go without. “I’m really terribly embarrassed,” she says. “It has completely turned around on me. I mean, completely.”

The short version is that the vaunted Washington state exchange – you know, the one that had Democratic governor Jay Inslee bragging today about how great it is – first messed up Ms. Sanford’s subsidy calculation. Then the exchange misled her about what would happen if she signed her kid up for the Medicaid expansion (she’d lose the tax credit from having a kid). So then the state exchange told Ms. Sanford that she doesn’t actually qualify for a subsidy at all… which means that she went from a gold plan to a silver plan and now is looking at a bronze plan that is so pathetic that it’ll make more sense for her to eat the tax, instead… and even then she’ll have another surprise when it turns out that she’ll owe about $350, not $95*. Oh, and the state of Washington is possibly enrolling people on Medicaid that they have no business enrolling in the first case. It’s hard to say, given how bad the customer service is.

Yay, Obamacare. Continue reading One of @BarackObama’s #obamacare ‘success stories’ Jessica Sanford will have no insurance.

The three interlocking gears of the #Obamacare #FAIL.

Originally, I was going to use the step-stool analogy, only the problem here is that in order for Obamacare to work all three problems need to be resolved. At the moment the administration is more or less working on one full time, and desultorily working on another. The third has yet to be addressed. So… consider a set of gears, with three obstructions. All three obstructions must be cleared before the machine can operate.

If it can operate. Continue reading The three interlocking gears of the #Obamacare #FAIL.

NBC: up to 10.5 million on track to have @BarackObama/Democratic party take away their health insurance.

Actually, before I get started on that… please watch this related ad on Terry McAuliffe, and his uncritical – not to say, slavish – devotion to one of the greatest American civic disasters since Prohibition. I refer, of course, to Obamacare:

Got that? Good. Go help Ken Cuccinelli.

Continue reading NBC: up to 10.5 million on track to have @BarackObama/Democratic party take away their health insurance.

Quote of the Day, Good Thing Oreg… No, Let’s Not Make That Joke edition. #obamacare

Too cruel*.

Anyway, Cover Oregon just now announced that its state health care exchange will not actually be live this month, after all. So, when will it be up? Funny you should ask that…

[When asked about the original Halloween(!) timeline,] Spokesman Michael Cox said that timeline is now a goal, rather than an expectation.

…Do I even need to translate that? Continue reading Quote of the Day, Good Thing Oreg… No, Let’s Not Make That Joke edition. #obamacare

#Obamacare chat line personnel starting to seriously lose it.

I know that this video from the GOP on the Obamacare exchange’s help chat SOUNDS like an exaggeration…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8Q8a3vTyQ0

…but it’s actually not. Continue reading #Obamacare chat line personnel starting to seriously lose it.

The new #Obamacare exchanges alternative: let’s SNAIL MAIL you the application!

The ongoing wreck that is the Obamacare federal exchange frankly keeps drawing my eye. It’s actually interesting that it does: I mean, I knew that it was going to be bad, and I even knew that it could get this bad – but it’s been staying this bad for longer than I’d have expected. Heaven knows why (we haven’t even seen yet the really awful parts*), but the administration has decided to ride this pony for a while.

Megan McArdle, in between bouts of horrified fascination** at all of this, takes the time to look at four of the current myths about the Obamacare exchanges (she politely didn’t mention that those were all delusions held by boosters of Obamacare). This one is a doozy, and the only one I hadn’t heard yet:

If the exchanges don’t work, as a last resort, we can always get people signed up through call centers. It’s true, there are call centers. But the computer systems at the call centers for states running the insurance exchanges are the same as the computer systems that consumers are having such a hard time with. A nice woman at a federal call center told me that (at least for the state of Florida, where my in-laws live) there is an alternate procedure: They can fill out a manual application in PDF format. But she also told me that it takes three weeks for that application to be mailed to your house. After you receive it, you check the application to ensure it’s accurate, and then mail it in. One to two weeks later, you will be notified of your subsidy eligibility. Then you can actually enroll in a plan, though she wasn’t quite clear on how that part would work — do you call back again?

Continue reading The new #Obamacare exchanges alternative: let’s SNAIL MAIL you the application!

White House bringing in “Top Men” to ‘fix’ #Obamacare exchanges.

A couple of things about this report:

The Obama administration Sunday said it’s called on “the best and brightest” tech experts from both government and the private sector to help fix the troubled website at the root of the Obamacare enrollment problems.

The unusual Sunday 600-word blog post from HHS was the first update in more than a week on the many failings of an expensive website that HHS itself described as “frustrating for many Americans.” But it didn’t specify who the administration had called in, or when the American people would see clear-cut results on Healthcare.gov.

Continue reading White House bringing in “*Top* Men” to ‘fix’ #Obamacare exchanges.

Spanish-language version of #Obamacare delayed, yet again.

September 27, 2013:

In another delay for the Affordable Care Act, White House officials quietly told Hispanic groups on Wednesday that the Spanish-language version of the healthcare.gov website will not be ready to handle online enrollments until mid-October.

Mid-October:

Continue reading Spanish-language version of #Obamacare delayed, yet again.

Quote of the Day, Only The New York Times Would Say This Was ‘Paradoxical’ edition.

The New York Times, coming down from its schadenfreude high to discover that, nope, Obamacare is still a steaming, radioactive hot mess that is also on fire*, writes:

Problems finding providers or drug coverage are occurring mainly on state exchanges paradoxically because those Web sites are working better than the federal insurance exchange used by 36 states.

Translation: the states are (marginally) better at complying with federal regulations than the federal government is itself. Raise your hand if this shocks you.

Moe Lane

*And how did Barack Obama manage that uniquely mixed metaphor? Well, to quote the philosopher: it wasn’t easy. He really had to work at it.

#Obamacare exchanges: June myth versus October reality.

Here’s a fun game: see how far you can get in this Atlantic Obamacare puff piece from June 2013 before you erupt in involuntary laughter!

As the first website to be demonstrated by a sitting President of the United States, Healthcare.gov already occupies an unusual place in history. In October, it will take on an even more important historic role, guiding millions of Americans through the process of choosing health insurance.

…I broke down at ‘millions.’ Although if I had managed to keep it together for that then I would have still completely lost it when I saw the Atlantic’s, ah, overly optimistic graphic on the Obamacare signup procedure. This is a much more accurate representation of how the process is actually working right now: Continue reading #Obamacare exchanges: June myth versus October reality.