Tag: exchanges

Quote of the Day, This Is Why We Fight #Obamacare edition.

Never mind partisan maneuvering: when it comes to stopping Obamacare, it is in the best interests of the country that we win.  Because the waves of pain are just going to keep on coming.

The first two weeks of healthcare.gov have passed, with no progress toward a usable website on which to enroll. The public is being told that they can also enroll via paper applications, but does anyone really think that the staff are in place to handle the volume of applications that must be completed to avoid the fines taxes that are part of Obamacare? Eventually, those paper applications will have to be converted to computer files, and is it likely that those computer systems will be up to the task?  Or that the data entry personnel will handle the conversions without massive problems?

Next April, just as income tax returns are about to be filed, with required paperwork indicating the taxpayer has health insurance acceptable to the feds, there are likely to be millions of people claiming they tried to enroll, but could not.

Continue reading Quote of the Day, This Is Why We Fight #Obamacare edition.

#Obamacare exchange design priorities: insurance is nice, but your SSN is ESSENTIAL.

This passage from the latest round of Dear God, but these Obamacare exchanges are horribly designed articles leaped out at me:

It appears that a major reason why the federal exchange has borne the brunt of the problems is that the website asks you to set up an account, inclusive of your Social Security number, before shopping for prices on the exchange. This is in sharp contrast to the site sponsored by eHealthInsurance.com, that allows anonymous users to look at plans and prices. Verifying these accounts has bogged down the login process.

Keep track of this particular problem, because I suspect that it will not be solved by imitating eHealthInsurance’s design architecture.  The government will instead do its level best to make the existing login process less onerous… because they want to be able to associate a Social Security number to every account that’s been set up for Obamacare.  And they certainly do not want anybody who isn’t an account holder to see the prices; anonymous users would take one look at the hikes and stay anonymous*.  But if you’re in the system, then they can target you.  And you may use that verb any way that you like, too.

Continue reading #Obamacare exchange design priorities: insurance is nice, but your SSN is ESSENTIAL.

@BarackObama desperately reaches out to Beltway Righty journalists.

Oh, to be a fly in the wall for this one: “President Obama held an off-the-record meeting with five conservative journalists on Tuesday afternoon.” Charles Krauthammer, Paul Gigot, Robert Costa, Kathleen Parker, and Byron York, supposedly. Of the five, Parker shouldn’t have been there, as nobody on the Right is going to take her seriously as a conservative voice on anything that’s not touching on life issues; Gigot is not particularly pinging my radar; and Krauthammer, Costa, & York are reasonable choices, although every man jack of ’em are firmly inside the Beltway.

I assume that the President tried his best to get them to try to calm the rest of us down, so let me save some time and gently note that this will not actually work.  This isn’t the Left; we’re not really all that fond of marching orders in the VRWC.  Then again, this may simply be sour grapes on my part; after all, the President was unlikely to invite, say, me over for tea.  Which is a pity – for him.  I could extract Barack Obama from this mess he’s put himself into in an afternoon.

Moe Lane

PS: I do not fault those five journalists for meeting with the President.  I heartily dislike President Obama myself by now, but if he invited me in I would go and be completely respectful of the position he holds (and solely for the position’s sake).

Reset to Zero: #Obamacare exchanges wipes passwords, incomplete accounts.

There’s a word for this.

Amid all the attention, bugs, and work happening at Healthcare.gov in light of the Affordable Care Act, potential registrants talking to phone support today have been told that all user passwords are being reset to help address the site’s login woes. And the tech supports behind Healthcare.gov will be asking more users to act in the name of fixing the site, too. According to registrants speaking with Ars, individuals whose logins never made it to the site’s database will have to re-register using a different username, as their previously chosen names are now stuck in authentication limbo.

You know the word, too. I won’t repeat it here, because of couth – but you know what I mean, ya, you betcha.

Via

Automated bot on #obamacare Live Chat *almost* passes a Turing Test.

Jesus Christ on His Heavenly Throne: they have a bot handling Obamacare Live Chat inquiries. This must have caused John Dickerson physical pain:

[4:30:27 pm]: Welcome! You’re now connected to Health Insurance Marketplace Live Chat.
Thanks for contacting us. My name is PGSTX0534. To protect your privacy, please don’t provide any personal information, like [your] Social Security Number, or any other sensitive medical or personal information.

[4:30:51 pm]: PGSTX0534
Hello, how may I help you today?

[snip of ‘Alice*’ describing problem.]

[4:32:21 pm]: PGSTX0534
Thanks for your interest in the Health Insurance Marketplace. We have a lot of visitors trying to use our website right now. That is causing some glitches for some people trying to create accounts or log in. Keep trying, and thanks for your patience. We’ll continue working to improve the site so you can get covered[.]

Continue reading Automated bot on #obamacare Live Chat *almost* passes a Turing Test.

Sticker Shock: Californians suddenly discover why all the Republican shouting over #Obamacare.

And BOOM goes the dynamite. 

Meet Tom Waschura, Californian, father of two – oh, and right: Obama supporter.  Just got a letter from his healthcare provider telling him that his private health insurance just went up by ten grand a year:

“I was laughing at Boehner — until the mail came today,” Waschura said, referring to House Speaker John Boehner, who is leading the Republican charge to defund Obamacare.

“I really don’t like the Republican tactics, but at least now I can understand why they are so pissed about this. When you take $10,000 out of my family’s pocket each year, that’s otherwise disposable income or retirement savings that will not be going into our local economy.”

Let me tell you a secret: we don’t need people like Mr. Waschura to love us.  We just need people like him to vote their class interests, to quote the Marxists who unaccountably confidently expect this rotating disaster of a health care rationing system to fuel public outcry for socialized medicine.  They don’t have to vote Republican forever, you know.  We’ll be happy if they vote Republican just enough to allow the party to kill this thing.  With that in mind, let me just be the first to assure Mr. Waschura that his hope that the rates will be adjusted down in a few years is only half-justified: left unchecked, they will be adjusted.  Only upwards.  The Democrats always expected and planned that Obamacare would be funded by raiding the incomes of as many people as possible; making the insurance companies the mechanism for jacking up premiums was the only way to get the insurance companies on-board.

In other words, Mr. Waschura: what happened to you was not a bug in the system.  It is the system.  And now you have to ask yourself: are you really prepared to pay ten grand a year and rising for the privilege of having a legislator theatrically agree with you on, say, first-trimester abortion? – Because I’m sure that the California Republican party will be able to find a candidate that won’t go out of his or her way to aggravate you on that topic.

Continue reading Sticker Shock: Californians suddenly discover why all the Republican shouting over #Obamacare.

#Obamacare got 99 problems but the rich ain’t one.

The rich, after all, don’t rely on Obamacare for their coverage. Everybody else? Yeah, well. About that.

It’s a batting average that won’t land the federal marketplace for Obamacare into the Healthcare Hall of Fame.

As few as 1 in 100 applications on the federal exchange contains enough information to enroll the applicant in a plan, several insurance industry sources told CNBC on Friday. Some of the problems involve how the exchange’s software collects and verifies an applicant’s data.

Low traffic* you can deal with. Bad site architecture you can deal with. Even poor selection you can deal with.  But the problem here – which is that a lot of people who think that they have gotten through the process have not, and thus are at high risk of not having insurance in January – is a really, really critical one for the administration.  And I don’t know how seriously they’re taking it: if I was running this thing and it was my good name on the line I’d never have let things get this bad in the first place.

But then, I don’t think that I’m a Greek demigod.

Continue reading #Obamacare got 99 problems but the rich ain’t one.

The public’s access to Healthcare.gov just got a good deal more selective.

Classical reference. Anyway:

HHS to take Healthcare.gov applications offline this weekend for ‘scheduled maintenance’

The agency reports that it will take down the application section of Healthcare.gov this weekend during off-peak hours “for scheduled maintenance.”

In a release titled “Week One Success,” the agency touts “sustained improvements” to the consumer experience since the launch Tuesday, despite the ongoing and widespread prevalence of long waits and error messages greeting people around the country who are trying to use the site.

I’m sure that they’ll be figuring all of this out eventually, but it’d be nice to hear how many people are actually using the site to, you know, buy health insurance. Because so far the silence is speaking volumes…

Moe Lane

Cover Oregon announces signup delay for #Obamacare exchange. *Despite* hipster songs.

But… but… but… this is impossible!

Oregonians will have to wait to enroll for health insurance through President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

I mean, Cover Oregon had a song!

Officials said late Monday that Cover Oregon, the state’s insurance marketplace that was supposed to go live on Tuesday, is still experiencing glitches. The online system is not correctly determining eligibility for tax credits, the Oregon Health Plan and Healthy Kids.

Continue reading Cover Oregon announces signup delay for #Obamacare exchange. *Despite* hipster songs.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R, Kansas) rashly promises to sign up for #obamacare exchanges.

I say rashly because he’s making a BIG assumption, here:

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), an opponent of ObamaCare, said he will try to sign up for the healthcare exchange when it opens Tuesday.

“I’m going to try to enroll tomorrow morning, October 1,” Pompeo vowed. “I wish everyone [signing up for ObamaCare] good luck.

…which is to say, Pompeo is assuming that it will be functionally possible to sign up for the exchanges and actually get a meaningful result.  Now, make no mistake: most people will be able to do something tomorrow that the administration will swiftly claim to be ‘signing up for the exchanges,’ even if it’s just entering in contact information.  But anybody who just got notified that they are losing their health care as of January 1, 2014 and who would like to start the process of getting replacement coverage now so that they don’t have a gap in coverage is likely to have an incredibly frustrating experience tomorrow.

When that happens, please remember: NO REPUBLICAN VOTED FOR OBAMACARE.

Continue reading Rep. Mike Pompeo (R, Kansas) rashly promises to sign up for #obamacare exchanges.