The Obamacare implosion is worse than you think

[Alan C.]

The Obamacare implosion is worse than you think

 

The shutdown drama has distracted from the fact that Obamacare’s debut is worse than many realize — and it threatens the fundamental viability of the law itself. The administration claims the Obamacare online exchanges crashed because the Web site got more than 8 million hits in the first week. Please. You know how many people visit Amazon.com every week? More than 70 million. The difference is: 1.) Amazon seldom crashes, and 2.) on Amazon, people actually buy something.

 

It appears virtually no one is buying Obamacare. While administration officials brag about how many visitors the site is getting, they refuse to divulge how many people actually signed up. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was asked that directly by Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.” “Fully enrolled?” Sebelius stuttered. “I can’t tell you. Because I don’t know.” That is a frightening admission of incompetence. If the Obama administration can’t even track how many people signed up, how on earth is it going to verify whether those people are eligible for subsidies? How will it protect against fraud?The Post reported this past weekend that the failure of the Web site is worse than previously known: “Even when consumers have been able to sign up, insurers sometimes can’t tell who their new customers are because of a separate set of computer defects.” It turns out that in some 99 percent of applications, the Obamacare site did not provide insurers with enough verifiable information to enroll people in their plans.Computer experts say the problems with the site are not because of heavy traffic but are the result of structural flaws in system architecture. It is going to take months to rebuild it. That raises a question: If the federal government can’t manage a simple Web site, how on earth is it going to manage the health care of millions of Americans?It also means that President Obama may have no choice but to delay the individual mandate. As my American Enterprise Institute colleague, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, points out, how can Obama penalize people for not having health insurance if the government’s Web site to provide that insurance doesn’t work?Without the individual mandate, Obamacare unravels. The only way the law works is if the government forces young, healthy people into it by threatening them with penalties for not carrying health insurance. But if there is no penalty for not signing up, then fewer Americans will sign up.

[Alan C.]

Obamacare woes widen as insurers get wrong data

 

Insurers say the federal health-care marketplace is generating flawed data that is straining their ability to handle even the trickle of enrollees who have gotten through so far, in a sign that technological problems extend further than the website traffic and software issues already identified.Emerging errors include duplicate enrollments, spouses reported as children, missing data fields and suspect eligibility determinations, say executives at more than a dozen health plans. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Nebraska said it had to hire temporary workers to contact new customers directly to resolve inaccuracies in submissions. Medical Mutual of Ohio said one customer had successfully signed up for three of its plans.

 

There is a reason why Obama is a politician rather than an entrepreneur (besides being a sociopathic narcissist).

[Alan C.]

Company behind Obamacare website in charge of nearly $2 billion in Sandy relief

 

CGI Federal Inc., the mastermind behind healthcare.gov, is assisting the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the distribution of $1.7 billion in relief for Hurricane Sandy.In a memo obtained by FreedomWorks titled, “Minutes of the 295th meeting of the members of the Housing Trust Fund Corporation held on May 9, 2013, at 8:30 a.m.,” CGI Federal is tasked with implementing the Disaster Housing Assistance Program. Additionally, they are asked to aid in the implementation of the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Program, an assistance program that had recently obtained $1.7 billion.

[Wesley]

Obamacare Saw 248 Enrollments in First Two Days

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-11-01/obamacare-saw-just-248-enrollments-in-two-days-documents-show

 

The Obamacare health-insurance exchanges enrolled 248 people in their first two days, as website outages and software errors hindered sign-ups, according to documents obtained by a congressional oversight committee.

Notes from three meetings at an Obama administration “war room,” obtained by Republican Representative Darrell Issa of California, show six people had enrolled on Oct. 1, the first day of the website’s operation. The summary of an Oct. 2 meeting stated that “direct enrollment is still not working” and about 40,000 applicants were idling in a virtual “waiting room.”

The documents were circulated by Republican opponents of the health law who are seizing on the botched rollout even as a new poll shows more Americans than not want to expand Obamacare or keep it intact. About 7 million people, mostly those who are currently uninsured, are supposed to gain medical coverage in 2014 through exchanges created under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

“We have always anticipated that the pace of enrollment will increase throughout the enrollment period,” Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said yesterday. The notes circulated by Issa don’t reflect “official enrollment statistics.”

The documents were released late yesterday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee led by Issa, who has been investigating implementation of the 2010 health law.

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[Alan C.]

First Obamacare Co-Op To Fail Could Cost Taxpayers Over $140 Million
 

CoOportunity Health, a nonprofit insurer created with $147 million in federal taxpayer loans as a result of the Affordable Care Act, was taken over by the state of Iowa in 2014 and declared insolvent in March of this year. Now the company’s ability to repay its loans may be looking grim, The Des Moines Register reports.

 

. . .

 

While CoOportunity retains just $109 million in assets, it has over $282 million in liabilities...

 

More than two-thirds of Obamacare enrollees unsatisfied with coverage: survey