Hear one of the ACA’s architects, Ezekiel Emanuel, amazingly elitist attitude and comments, one being that the individual insurance plan is a thing of the past.
This authors elitist mentality shines through the bill that says IT knows better than the individual. Read more here
Take note that during the above report, Obama touted over 50,000 people signed up to Medicair… but in order for his ACA to work… they must sign up to private insurance… unless this isn’t the goal — that is, to make his law work.
As I pointed out in a post:
So if you have a professor who is harping on Capitalism, Bush, Republicans, Reagan, Newt, Ted Cruz, whomever…, you just need to point out that since FDR’s “New Deal“ and Johnson’s “Great Society” all they are really criticizing is regulation and redistribution. Because we are far from a truly free-market.
Via the Blaze:
As Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified Wednesday before Congress on the failed Obamacare website rollout, CNN ran a split-screen of her testimony with an image of the crashed site.
“I would suggest the website has never crashed,” Sebelius said during Wednesday’s House Commerce and Energy Committee hearing. “It is functional, but at a very slow speed and very low reliability, and has continued to function.”
Naturally, the image of the CNN split-screen started to circulate on social media. And some have noted that it just doesn’t look good for Sebelius or anyone involved in the mess that has been healthcare.gov [above]
The Most Embarrassing Possible Split-Screen Happened While Kathleen Sebelius Testified On Obamacare
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is testifying Wednesday on the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov, the website where consumers are supposed purchase insurance.
As she was testifying, CNN’s Zach Wolf snapped an “unfortunate” split screen of her testimony that neatly juxtaposed with why she was there — the website was down again…
Via HotAir:
After a month of the ObamaCare fiasco, insurers find themselves staring into the abyss of the “death spiral” — the risk-pool meltdown of accepting too many high-maintenance consumers without enough low-maintenance consumers to spread the costs. CBS Evening News focused on one such insurer, a new co-op in Maryland that got its start from a $65 million federal loan and planned on marketing mainly within the ObamaCare exchange. After a few days of watching HHS flounder, the CEO threw out that business plan entirely.
How many enrollees has he seen in a month? Maybe a dozen, and he needs 15,000 by the year’s end in order to break even:
[….]
The Obama administration tried to spark the creation of enough co-ops to give people a wider range of choices, especially in rural areas. So far that’s been a bust, as the New York Times reported last week and CBS confirmed on Monday. Fifty-eight percent of the counties serviced by the federal exchange only have one or two insurers offering plans, even with the hundreds of millions loaned out to these co-ops.
That, however, is a secondary consideration for Evergreen and its CEO. If he can’t sign up more than a dozen a month, or even a dozen a day, he’s going to be out of business — and he won’t be the only one looking at a death spiral, either. Small wonder they’re looking for corporate business, but that’s not a natural market for smaller co-ops, especially not those who picked the wrong business plan in the beginning.
“Mark! He said ‘period,’ he said if you like your plan you can keep it. Period!”
Also from the Blaze… an Obama staffer that fought a three year battle FOR Obamacare has a change of heart… why? For background she has run in the past for Democratic party candidate for Kane County Board Chairman, also, here is some bio info on Sue:
Here is the piece from the Blaze:
Sue Klinkhamer spent two years defending and fighting for Obamacare while working for Congressman Bill Foster (D-Ill.). But now that she’s seen the effect of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul on her health insurance rates, Klinkhamer is boldly admitting that she was “very wrong.”
In a recent email sent to her former boss, Rep. Foster, and other Democratic colleagues, she reportedly wrote [emphasis added]:
“I spent two years defending Obamacare. I had constituents scream at me, spit at me and call me names that I can’t put in print. The congressman was not re-elected in 2010 mainly because of the anti-Obamacare anger. When the congressman was not re-elected, I also (along with the rest of our staff) lost my job. I was upset that because of the health care issue, I didn’t have a job anymore but still defended Obamacare because it would make health care available to everyone at, what I assumed, would be an affordable price. I have now learned that I was wrong. Very wrong.”
So why the sudden change of heart?
She learned that President Obama’s promise, “if you like your health plan, you can keep it,” was not true for everyone.
When Foster lost his reelection bid, Klinkhamer was out of a job and in need of individual insurance. Three years ago, she reportedly paid $225 a month with a $2,500 deductible. Her rates steadily increased and she was paying $291 a month with a $3,500 deductible as of Sept. 1, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
Then she got “the letter” that people across the country are currently receiving in the mail.
“Blue Cross stated my current coverage would expire on Dec. 31, and here are my options: I can have a plan with similar benefits for $647.12 [or] I can have a plan with similar [but higher] pricing for $322.32 but with a $6,500 deductible,” Klinkhamer wrote.
“Blue Cross also tells me that if I don’t pick one of the options, they will just assume I want the one for $647. … Someone please tell me why my premium in January will be $356 more than in December?” she added.
Obama admin. knew millions could not keep their health insurance
President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.
Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”
None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date — the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example — the policy would not be grandfathered.
Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”
That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.
White House Website Still Promising You Can Keep Your Health Insurance If You Like It…
Video Description:
Megyn Kelly took on Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, on Friday night, grilling him on the colossal trainwreck of the health care law’s rollout and asking whether President Obama’s failed promises were “intentionally misleading or grossly mistaken.” Kelly told her all the issues with insurance companies restructuring plans and employers altering policies were “foreseeable,” and argued a minimum floor of coverage might not sit well with some people. Emanuel shot back that the main thrust of the Obamacare law is to cover millions more people, saying the GOP “never had a coherent plan or alternative.” Emanuel argued employers cut back on coverage en masse under Bush, but Kelly said there are still plenty of issues with Obamacare, like young people not signing up and the “huge swelling of the Medicaid rolls.” Emanuel dismissed the numbers already coming out as “totally irrelevant,” shouting “You have no idea whether you’re on track or not!” Kelly shot back, “Kathleen Sebelius won’t tell me!”
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, on Thursday grilled Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president of CGI Federal Inc., the company that built the Obamacare health care exchange website, on language hidden in source code that says applicants have “no reasonable expectation of privacy.”
“Not because I believe in bigger government — I don’t” ~ Obama
Held Accountable? Remember this?
According to Justice Roberts and four other Supremes (not the musical group), it is a tax:
The individual mandate requiring Americans to carry insurance or pay a fine was clearly a constitutional nightmare. But, in an act of utter desperation, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Supreme Court’s 4 Liberal justices in ruling that the mandate was legal under Congress’ constitutional authority “to collect Taxes” to provide for “the general Welfare of the United States.”
In an interview, in 2009, President Obama insisted that the mandate was not a tax, and that he wasn’t breaking his pledge not to increase taxes on the middle class by implementing the mandate.
How bout this one?
Well… more people have had their insurance dropped because of O-Care in just three states than all people who have — so far — signed up for O-Care nation wide. Sick! Here are just some specified examples:
CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield is being forced to cancel plans that currently cover 76,000 individuals in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., due to changes made by President Obama’s health care law, the company told the Washington Examiner today.
That represents more than 40 percent of the 177,000 individuals covered by CareFirst in those states.
Though Obama famously promised that those who liked their health care coverage could keep it under his program, in reality, the health care law imposes a raft of new regulations on insurance policies starting Jan. 1 that are forcing insurers across the country to terminate existing plans.
In theory, rules were supposed to allow pre-existing plans to be “grandfathered in,” but they were written so narrowly that they leave out many plans.
“Of the 177,000 individuals under age 65 who are covered by CareFirst, about 76,000 of them are in a non-grandfathered plan — a plan that will not comply with the guidelines imposed by the Affordable Care Act at their time of renewal this year or next,” CareFirst said in an email in response to an inquiry by the Examiner….
(CBS)
….”I was completely happy with the insurance I had before,” Willes said.
So she was surprised when she tried to renew her policy. What did she find out?
“That my insurance was going to be completely different, and they were going to be replaced with 10 new plans that were going to fall under the regulations of the Affordable Care Act,” she said.
Her insurer, Kaiser Permanente, is terminating policies for 160,000 people in California and presenting them with new plans that comply with the healthcare law.
“Before I had a plan that I had a $1,500 deductible,” she said. “I paid $199 dollars a month. The most similar plan that I would have available to me would be $278 a month. My deductible would be $6,500 dollars, and all of my care after that point would only be covered 70 percent.”
…roughly 16 million Americans will lose their current plans because of Obamacare:
The U.S. individual health insurance market currently totals about 19 million people. Because the Obama administration’s regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal. The rules are very complex. For example, if you had an individual plan in March of 2010 when the law was passed and you only increased the deductible from $1,000 to $1,500 in the years since, your plan has lost its grandfather status and it will no longer be available to you when it would have renewed in 2014.
These 16 million people are now receiving letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must re-enroll in order to avoid a break in coverage and comply with the new health law’s benefit mandates––the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases.
Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent.
Will the reasonable Left in this country stand up? Already, every Democrat (yes, EVERY) running for reelection in 2014 is FOR suspending O-care temporarily. An admission — of sorts — of its failure and the sense that the American public rejects O-Care… even in Blue districts.
“Central planning is a bureaucratic nightmare” ~ Hayek (get)
Even I couldn’t log on to Healthcare.gov ~ Obamacare contractor (see)
No one even considered the scenario we are now seeing: a partially working system in which it is difficult to sign up but not impossible. This means that the most motivated consumers (the sickest) are likely to persevere in creating accounts, while the younger and healthier are more likely to skip an unpleasant process and risk a minimal fine. “If they don’t get the necessary volume and demographic mix in the exchanges,” Yuval Levin of National Affairs told me, “it could set off a catastrophic adverse selection spiral that would not only render the exchanges inoperable but badly damage our large health care systems.”
But the failed rollout has already raised ideological issues of broader significance. It has reinforced a widely held, pre-existing belief that government-run health systems are bureaucratic nightmares. And it has added credence to the libertarian argument that some human systems are too complex to be effectively managed. Perhaps the problem with Obamacare is not failed leadership, but the whole project of putting a federal agency, 55 contractors and 500 million lines of software code in charge of a health system intended to cover millions of Americans.
I am not a libertarian who argues against the need for programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. But Friedrich Hayek has this much going for him: He understood that the challenge of technocratic planning is always limited information. “The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.”
Via NewsBusters:
MSNBC’s Chris Jansing brought software expert Luke Chung onto Thursday’s Jansing & Co. to analyze the federal government’s troubled healthcare.gov website. Chung, the founder and president of software and database programming company FMS, served up a scathing indictment of the website that left Jansing reeling at certain points during the interview. [See video below the break. MP3 audio here.]
Jansing started by asking how complicated it was to get healthcare.gov up and running. Chung was very frank with her: “I don’t know why they made it so complicated. This really shouldn’t be that difficult.” Jansing fumbled around, talking about other countries and states that have launched similar programs before playing administration advocate…
[….]
Later, Chung eviscerated CGI, the IT company hired by the government to develop healthcare.gov: “This was built, I think, by people who were never paid before to create software. I think they just got out of school or something. You know, these government contractors, they win these contracts and then they’re incentivized to deliver the cheapest people possible to meet the minimum requirements.”
Chung bluntly put the website problems in perspective: “I mean, this is not rocket science. We’re not curing cancer, we’re not providing any health care, we’re not even providing health insurance. We’re filling out a paper form. Not that hard.”
Via MoonBat:
HotAir has this:
There’s a growing consensus on the mid- to late-November time frame by which the Obama administration really, really needs to have ObamaCare’s online portal running smoothly to avoid inducing more death-spiral risks and subsequent industry panic, and all of their plans for public outreach and directing people to call centers and whatnot is only going to get them so far.
“Tech surge” or no tech surge, CNN reports that still more experts and computer engineers are piling on to the suggestion that fixing HealthCare.Gov’s major problems before the end of 2013 just isn’t a feasible task, and that rebuilding the system from scratch would be the administration’s easiest and safest bet:
After assessing the website, Dave Kennedy, the CEO of information-security company Trusted Sec, estimates that about 20% of Healthcare.gov needs to be rewritten. With a whopping 500 million lines of code, according to a recent New York Times report, Kennedy believes fixing the site would probably take six months to a year.
… Nish Bhalla, CEO of information-security firm Security Compass, said it “does not sound realistic at all” that Healthcare.gov will be fully operational before that point.
“We don’t even know where all of the problems lie, so how can we solve them?” Bhalla said. “It’s like a drive-by shooting: You’re going fast and you might hit it, you might miss it. But you can’t fix what you can’t identify.” …
“Projects that are done rapidly usually have a lot of [repetitive] code,” said Arron Kallenberg, a software engineer and tech entrepreneur. “So when you have a problem, instead of debugging something in a single location, you’re tracking it down all through the code base.”
A whopping 500 million lines of code is “so excessive,” says Kennedy, and that a more normal number for a project like the ObamaCare site would lie somewhere in the range of 25 million to 50 million. Dayum.