Yeah? Do you know anyone who had individual insurance and is now losing it? There are millions of them. Will they be able to get new policies through the exchanges? Sure, if they can afford it. And if the government gets its act together and figures out how to provide it to them.
Here’s the real scoop on what’s happening with Obamacare: Older people and poorer people will probably see their premiums go down. Young people who make enough that they can’t qualify for subsidies are going to see large price increases. The overall number of people that will have health insurance may not change that much - it depends how many people opt to go without insurance and pay the penalty rather than buy insurance.
But what this really is, is just another wealth transfer program - this time, from young working families to the poor and to older people who don’t yet qualify for Medicare. The Boomers win again, and the wealthiest cohort in society is about to get a new, very large subsidy via the generation that has been hit hardest by the recession and has much less wealth than they do.
That’s what happens to ‘progressive’ ideas by the time they’ve been filtered through the political machine and all the special interests have wet their beaks.
That’s for a young married couple. Young married families are seeing price increases that are pretty unaffordable. In California on average, young people who don’t qualify for subsidies are seeing a 30% increase in their health insurance:
If these people choose to go without insurance, Obamacare goes upside down and they have to either raise rates even higher or the federal government has to start large, direct subsidies to the program to keep it afloat.
The other alternative is that people will have to downgrade their insurance and opt for the cheapest ‘bronze’ plans, which carry very high deductibles. So the prospect of being bankrupted by health care costs is still very real - especially because the group of people we’re talking about has very little in the way of savings and many of them are already fully leveraged to pay for their houses and cars.
But, but… President Obama promised that if you like your health care you can keep it! He’s said that over and over again. I think he even used his trademark “Let me be perfectly clear” preamble on that one a few times. It’s almost like he lied or something. Or maybe he had no freaking clue what would happen, and was, you know…making shit up.
I won’t. I understand that software isn’t perfect, and I would be forgiving of the occasional ‘glitch’ if that was all it was. Unfortunately, this administration has such a poor track record with the truth that it’s going to be very hard for us to know. They’ll lie about the failures then just like they’ve been lying about them from the start.
My prediction is that they’ll have something going by Nov 30, because Obama’s credibility is already hanging by a thread and they can’t afford to blow another promised deadline. The question is how they get it up and running. The iron triangle of project engineering is time, features, and quality. You can have two of them. So my guess is that they are frantically trying to figure out which features they can cut and how many bugs they can tolerate.
If they have a competent project manager now, he or she will be frantically doing a ‘bug triage’, attempting to figure out which ones are ‘release criterion’ (i.e. can’t ship with them in place) and which ones can be tolerated after release. If the count is too high or the estimate for fixing them is too long, the next thing they’ll do is start prioritizing features and trying to figure out which ones can be ripped out while plausibly maintaining the concept of the portal in the first place.
The obvious way this could go is probably what they should have done in the first place - turn the site into an informational resource where you can read all about the plans and pick the one you want, but all the web site will do is forward your application to a human somewhere - either at the insurers or to the feds who will then hire a large support staff to go through them.
The next obvious thing is that they could just remove all the verification requirements like tying into Social Security, the VA, the IRS, etc. Allow you to file the transaction electronically, then shift the burden for verifying income and other statuses to the individual health insurers. That will drive their prices up, but done cleverly the connection between the price increases and the lack of features on the web site won’t be clear so they’ll get a pass. Maybe they can figure out a way to blame Republicans for the price increases.
The most likely thing that will happen is more of what’s already happened - the politicians will make unreasonable demands of the project people (“You WILL ship on time, and you WILL make sure all the features are in place. Failure is not an option”). Then the politicians will satisfy themselves that they did ‘everything they could’, and all that’s left is to sit back and wait for the magic to happen. And then Nov 30 when this thing doesn’t work, we’ll be having this conversation again.
The other things we haven’t talked about should be equally worrying: What’s the security like? This portal connects to just about every government database. Just how secure is it? Is it going to be an identity-thief’s wet dream? We already know they skimped on security by canceling the plan to do background checks on all the ‘navigators’ who have access to your personal records because they ran out of time. And we know they’ve already ignored quality. I’d be very worried about security at this point.
In fact, if the Republicans were smart they’d get ahead of this and demand very loudly that a full security audit be done on the web portal before its new rollout. That way, when that doesn’t happen and some hacker nightmare ensues, they can say “we told you so”. It would be smart politics.
How about a disaster recovery plan? Have they got one? What happens if a building containing critical hub servers burns down, or a storm takes out the power in a region, etc? My company spends millions on disaster recovery. We maintain a complete duplicate of our data center in another geographic location and we have failover drills and all the rest. What do you think the odds are that the clowns responsible for this mess have taken care of that?
But back to the original point: I’ll call the Nov 30 date a failure if one of three things happens: 1) They miss that date by more than 2 weeks, 2) They hit it but only by removing what looks like pretty essential features, and 3) it’s so riddled with bugs that the news is filled with reports of failed transactions, accidentally cancelled insurance policies, etc.
The thing is, the ‘glitches’ so far have prevented almost everyone from actually trying to buy insurance. That’s a very good thing, because reports are coming out that the few transactions that made it through have been riddled with errors. It’s a much more serious thing to buy health insurance and then when your kid gets sick you find out that you’re not covered because your kid was listed as your spouse, or not listed at all.
Back-end data integration errors are very dangerous because they don’t always get caught and they could lead to canceled insurance, incorrect coverage, wrong charges, and all kinds of other bad things.
That monied interests have too much power in our decisions, this was a plan by progressives? So, it’s their fault? Or just your mournfully realistic assessment of us fuzzy-thinking Pollyannas?
Sam, Sam, what has become of you? This sort of thing, the sneering insinuation offered without the remotest substantiation, is so very…un-Canadian!
Well, he was telling everyone that they would absolutely, definitely be able to keep their current insurance if they wanted - while pushing a law that made many of those existing plans illegal.
What would you call it? A lie? Or just plain incompetence? Making promises without knowing whether he could keep them because he had no idea what was actually in the bill?
And yes, it was a plan by progressives. Unless you think Obama isn’t a progressive.
Ah, I see! So, you took that as a promise that he would coerce the health insurance companies not to alter their interaction with their customers? Seriously? And you would have supported such a “big government” interference, being such a big fan of progressive socialism? Permit me to remark that I find that unlikely.
I’ve thought for some time now that Obama is remarkably like President Grant–he has personal integrity, but shows amazingly poor judgment in choosing some of his associates and subordinates.
He himself is presumably not a computer expert, which is fine. But it seems that he can’t hire anybody who is, no matter how hard he tries.
Obamacare was sold under the repeated and re-repeated line, not just by the President, but by various government officials, that nobody would be forced out of their current plan.
The health insurance companies in America have benefited for a generation or more from governance that lavishes encouragement and privilege. Remember how they squealed in porcine rage at the notion that they might be forced to return 80% of the money they are paid in premiums to the actual policy holders? How can they attract world class talent for their executive offices if they are forced to scrimp along with a mere 20% margin for administration and compensation?
I’ve listened for years to documented tales of corporate greed, of men being paid handsome bonuses for devising some technicality that would deny a legitimate claim to benefits. They should be pleased enough that they are not horse-whipped through the streets, never mind pampered by a doting government. Buying insurance should not be synonymous with an opportunity to play Wheel of Coverage. Ooooh, darn, you hit “Bankrupt”!
If the insurance companies change their policies in such a way as to make them unattractive, how is that the same as the government interfering in choice? Because they say so? They’ve done an extraordinary amount of misdirection themselves, over the years. In case it has escaped your attention.
Of course, they had a very good reason, based on sound free market principles. They did it because we let them get away with it. And they’ll do it to us again tomorrow, if we let them. They will give us the business, as usual.
Are you not aware of what’s going on? They DID coerce health insurers, and forced them to DROP coverage for people by making certain health plans illegal. And while they were planning to do that they were promising people that there was nothing in Obamacare that would force you out of your current plan if you liked it. They said it again and again. It was either a complete lie, or the Obama administration had no clue what was in their signature legislation.
Frankly, at this point I could believe either one of those scenarios. Incompetence or lies. Take your pick.
And you might notice that they’ve been awfully quiet about Obamacare, and they’ve been at the White House repeatedly.
Why do you think that this somehow reins in the health insurers? The government is spending trillions of dollars to subsidize their industry, while at the same time helping to close the shop and keep competition out. If you’re a health executive, what’s not to like?
You don’t seem to get that you’ve helped a elect a guy who is all about crony capitalism. Wall Street loves him. Giant corporations love him. The people getting screwed are those people without the political clout to be able to force their snouts into the trough.
And you’re under the impression that Obamacare means your insurer will not ever be allowed to dispute a claim? Or that they haven’t used this opportunity to pad and protect their profits?
Obama said, “If you like your current health plan, you’ll be able to keep it.” He made that a promise. He repeated it constantly. So did his administration officials. Then he signed a law that made perhaps 2 million current health plans illegal. He forced all of those people out of their current plans, which he promised would not be touched. What part of this are you not understanding?
Odd statements from a guy whose previous criticisms of Obamacare were from the “Freedom! Creeping socialism!” side, not this new “Crony capitalism!” side.
But then, his record of spotting Presidential lies is impeccable, so perhaps some slack should be given.
Still, it is good that Comrade Sam has stumbled from the path of political error and into the shining light of correctness. It may be too early to offer him a place on the Central Committee of the SDMB People’s Revolutionary Front for the Liberation from Ignorance (Trotskyist), but I wouldn’t say it is entirely out of the question.
The system accesses the Social Security database. At one line per American, that’s about 300 million “lines of code” right there.
You wouldn’t include those lines in a code line total? :smack: The people trying to badmouth our Kenyan gun-stealing President and his eponymous program are, without exception, using the most inflated ridiculous statistics they can find.
What, you think complaining about crony capitalism is teh exclusive preserve of the left? Libertarians are very much aware of, and against, crony capitalism.
Crony capitalists are statists just like you. They’re what enable the ‘progressive’ state, because governments aren’t capable of running everything. So if they want to control everything, they need the help of capitalists who are willing to get in bed with them so long as they are protected from competition and have their profits guaranteed.
If “forever” means “since January 20, 2009”, maybe. :dubious: I think you know better.
Your ingenuity in finding new ways to bash anything the Democrats do or say is remarkable, gotta grant you that, but you do need to remember that anything you post here is easily searchable.
Just to be clearer, could you kindly point to your clearest evidence that the PPACA website contract was steered to Obama “cronies” (in Canada!), rather than procured through the normal government process?
Then perhaps you can remind us about your harsh denunciations of Halliburton in the previous administration. With links, if you don’t mind.
The idea, yes, and only partly. We’re talking about the implementation.
He ran on a lot of things, and Romney ran a pretty poor campaign. But I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. If you are trying to claim that he won because he ran on it, yes, I would like to see a cite for that.