Obamacare Website Fixes Could Take Two Weeks Or Two Months 382
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like nobody is quite sure how long it will take to fix the health insurance marketplace website. '"One person familiar with the system's development said that the project was now roughly 70 percent of the way toward operating properly, but that predictions varied on when the remaining 30 percent would be done," the Times reported yesterday. "'I've heard as little as two weeks or as much as a couple of months,' that person said. Others warned that the fixes themselves were creating new problems, and said that the full extent of the problems might not be known because so many consumers had been stymied at the first step in the application process."'"
Still faster / easier to apply than it used to be (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql9RVy6FWkg
Re:Still faster / easier to apply than it used to (Score:4, Insightful)
It just goes to show: It doesn't always pay to contract everything out to the private sector...
Re:Still faster / easier to apply than it used to (Score:4, Insightful)
It just goes to show: It doesn't always pay to contract everything out to the private sector...
Nor does it pay to code it till it's designed, and debug it till it's tested.
If the state of the website is any indication ... (Score:3, Informative)
I do not feel so great for Obamacare at all.
I mean, the code itself ( as referred to the following link: https://www.healthcare.gov/marketplace/global/en_US/registration.js [healthcare.gov] ) is hopelessly broken.
The code looks more like a primary school coding project than a government project.
Or does this signify the quality of (or rather, the lack thereof) : care Obama wants give the US citizens ?
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:If the state of the website is any indication . (Score:5, Insightful)
Get used to it. Those of us who have been carrying health insurance for years have been required to pay for you dumb fucks who don't carry health insurance because you "never get sick" and now just got cancer or ran your car into a tree.
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Get used to it. Those of us who have been carrying health insurance for years have been required to pay for you dumb fucks who don't carry health insurance because you "never get sick" and now just got cancer or ran your car into a tree.
Every once in a while, I think "insightful" should go to +6!
Re: If the state of the website is any indication (Score:3)
Re: You got a million dollars handy? (Score:3)
Re: If the state of the website is any indication (Score:3)
If/when you develop diabetics, cancer, what have you, then you can sign up for healthcare coverage since it will be illegal to deny anyone coverage because of a pre-existing condition.
Re:If the state of the website is any indication . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If the state of the website is any indication . (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow that's absolutely ridiculous. How is it that a site can be rolled out THIS unfinished?
Amazon and eBay seem to have worked with what I imagine is a similar to greater load. All while managing to avoid any highly publicized information leaks (at least I think, correct me if I'm wrong), and having pretty good uptime.
Could you imagine finding lorem ipsum text or just completely broken scripts on either of those sites? The people responsible would be gone long before the project saw the light of day. You want to know what the price tag on the site is...634...MILLION dollars.
Dafuq.
Re:Still faster / easier to apply than it used to (Score:5, Informative)
"It just goes to show: It doesn't always pay to contract everything out to the private sector..."
This website is not even what I would call "private sector". A couple of days ago I looked at some javascript from the registration page. You can look at it yourself HERE [healthcare.gov], direct from healthcare.gov.
This javascript is hopelessly broken. Even simple string values are completely messed up. I just checked it again, straight from the website, and even the most basic (literally first day javascript student level) mistakes have not been changed!
This is a complete mess. 70% my smooth, shapely, lily-white ass. It ain't even close to working.
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Re:Still faster / easier to apply than it used to (Score:5, Insightful)
resources['ffe.ee.myAccount.TEST'] = 'Apples to Apples';
Seems like someone was trying to work out how to add resources. Looks like they also wanted to test out the quoting:
resources['ffe.ee.myAccount.quoteTest'] = '“Apes.”';
Hmm looks like you can't update your name at the moment. I guess you could call XXX-XXXX to do it: resources['ffe.ee.myAccount.profile.updateName'] = 'To change your name you must call 1-800-XXX-XXXX';
Hey I wonder what happens when you try to login too many times incorrectly? Apparently nothing:
showAlertText
I wonder who "Pod 6" is?
And then my personal favourite, which is written twice in the code:
Why is there a semicolon in the "don't" word? It is a typo or couldn't they figure out how to escape a single quote character in whatever is generating their JS? (This line is repeated twice) I'm guessing it was just a rushed developer who was running out of time.
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Why didn't your state setup their own exchange like my own, New York? It worked great. The fed site redirected me right to new york's site.
Easy Peasy.
I guess if the state you live in just couldn't get the job done themselves, and NEEDS TO RELY ON THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO DO IT FOR THEM, well, beggers can't be choosers, can they?
Re:Still faster / easier to apply than it used to (Score:4, Funny)
Why didn't your state setup their own exchange like my own, New York? It worked great. The fed site redirected me right to new york's site.
Easy Peasy.
I guess if the state you live in just couldn't get the job done themselves, and NEEDS TO RELY ON THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO DO IT FOR THEM, well, beggers can't be choosers, can they?
Are you sure the domain name for your state's site should end in .ru?
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I guess if the state you live in just couldn't get the job done themselves, and NEEDS TO RELY ON THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO DO IT FOR THEM, well, beggers can't be choosers, can they?
The whole point of obamacare is to do an end run around a state's desire to "do the job themselves", and youre lambasting them for it now?
Wow.
Re:Still faster / easier to apply than it used to (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should people have to volunteer to fix something that we (taxpayers) paid a 9-digit sum of money to generate to begin with?
I'm pretty sure that somewhere in that contract, there was some language that said the end product needed to actually function. It's not on us to fix it - it's on the Government to hold the contractor accountable, or tear them apart piece by piece for breach of contract.
Re:Still faster / easier to apply than it used to (Score:5, Insightful)
It just goes to show: It doesn't always pay to contract everything out to the private sector...
Because government employee programmers, who probably belong to a union and cannot be fired for anything less than murdering the boss, would have done better?
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It just goes to show: It doesn't always pay to contract everything out to the private sector...
The problem with contracting to the government is that any company looks at government contracts as a license to print money.
Whenever a government tender goes out, their eyes light up and the start seeing dollar signs everywhere. Practically no-one signs a fixed price contract unless they've got an off the shelf product with a no-modifications clause otherwise it's time and materials in which case expect every little thing to take longer and cost extra... Why? because it's the government and they're an e
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But there's still no guarantee your application will go anywhere. You can be disqualified and shunted into Medicaid.
This was an abortion from the start. If single payer is what you want, they should have just opened Medicare to everyone. Free if you're destitute, you pay otherwise.
Of course, we still don't have enough doctors and medical professionals, and that situation will only get worse. So many under BarryCare, Medicare, whatever will still have trouble getting treatment without supplemental insura
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If single payer is what you want, they should have just opened Medicare to everyone.
That would have taken more of a Democratic majority than continued to exist once Ted Kennedy passed away.
Of course, we still don't have enough doctors and medical professionals
How much of that is due to AMA lobbying?
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I can't speak to Doctors, but right now the education industry has pumped out way more nurses than we can employ. If the ACA forces hospitals to expand, the nursing jobs will fill quickly.
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As a side note, the lack of insurance has a tendency of making medical problems worse. Patients won't tend to pay out of pocket for preventative medicine, instead waiting until a medical issue requires emergency care. The ACA can certainly help correct this issue.
Apt platitude: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
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That isn't always the case in any field. Sometimes it really is less expensive to just fix the stuff that comes up.
Further, you can take any preventative measure and apply it in a way that the thing it's supposed to prevent would be cheaper to handle than the measure itself.
For instance, do you own a car? Change the oil ever 5k miles (7k some models) as the manufacturer recommends? How about every 3k miles as your mechanic recommends, that must be better, right? And if that's good, how about changing the
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That's a terrible comparison. Changing the oil according to the manufacturers recommended specifications *is* preventative care. Reactionary care would be ignoring the oil until the engine starts making clanking noises. At that point, you're performing a full rebuild, replacing all the components that were damaged by the oil system failure.
The preventative option costs $50 a few times a year. The reactionary option costs thousands of dollars.
Obama care isn't going to mandate that you go to the doctor every
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If you're destitute, you're already covered by Medicaid.
The problem with opening Medicare is that it is in effect heavily subsidized and there is no good way of pricing it.
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No, they don't, because the supply of medical professionals has been artificially limited and the market is highly regulated. But that's true for many professions, from longshoremen to lawyers. Everything from unions to the AMA sees to it.
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This is going to make the 90% rule interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
"The first 90% of the work takes the first 90% of the time; the last 10% of the work takes the second 90% of the time".
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Replying to myself, "and the user interface takes the third 90% of the time."
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Oh, I think it's more of:
How long and how much effort will it take to fix it . . . ?
It depends. How much money do you have . . . ?
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At some point the project doesn't get done any sooner by adding more people (and money) on the project. This is primarily because of the effort it takes to coordinate so many people.
Or to use the famous example from Mythical Man Month, one woman can produce a child in nine months, but nine women won't produce it for you in one month.
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But nine women may get you one in 5-6 months as long "a baby" is all you're looking for and as "healthy" and "Safe" are not requirements.
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And estimates that are just guesses always take longer than you'd expect.
Seems fine to me (Score:4, Informative)
I was able to register fairly early (around the 3rd) - when the site was still undergoing the initial onslaught of gawkers. It seems to be working ok now - no more "please wait, we are too busy" page at initial login, logging in takes a few seconds. Once in - I am able to search and view policies for appropriate states. The only real issue I found so far is that some of the insurance companies make it difficult to find actual policy prospectus. BCBS does a decent job with direct links, a few others make you look it up in a list by name (which may or may not match the name they present on the main site) and one (Cigna) has broken links that lead nowhere (but their rates suck anyway).
All in all seems about as usable as I've ever seen in a government site. A heck of a lot better than the tax payment system feds have or any of the state DMV sites I had to deal with (and we are talking "red" states, who clearly should know better, right?)
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That's my experience too. When it first opened about two weeks ago it was totally borked.
Now it seems to be OK. I've been able to register and go through the process of signing up. No more wait screens.
The news of course is behind a bit. It doesn't help that some people with a political agenda are calling it a failure.
It isn't.
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I was able to register fairly early (around the 3rd) - when the site was still undergoing the initial onslaught of gawkers....
Wow, this is kind of like seeing an endangered species or something.
Only Five Iowans Have Signed Up on Obamacare Exchange [breitbart.com] - 10 Oct 2013
Hawaii Relaunching Obamacare Exchange After Not Selling Any Health Insurance Due To Software Problems [cbslocal.com] - October 10, 2013
Good news: Maryland has successfully enrolled 326 people in ObamaCare [hotair.com] - October 7, 2013
Just 51,000 Americans Have Enrolled in Federal Obamacare Exchanges? [townhall.com] - Oct 11, 2013
Double Down: Obamacare Will Increase Avg. Individual-Market Insurance Premiums By 99% Fo [forbes.com]
Two months, eh? (Score:2)
Seems to me that I read that people using the Exchange need sign up for an approved insurance policy by Dec. 15, if they want to have it go into effect Jan 1.
Which suggests very strongly that if they take that two months, then a lot of people are going to be looking forward to penalties come tax-time next year.
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"Which suggests very strongly that if they take that two months, then a lot of people are going to be looking forward to penalties come tax-time next year."
It's COMPLETELY unreasonable to expect people to find and implement a policy that fits them, given this huge mess of bureaucracy and glitches, in 60 days or so.
What's that old adage? (Score:2)
That 20% of the code/problems take 80% of the time? Perhaps the developers picked the wrong 2 of: fast, cheap, or good. [wikipedia.org].
Re:What's that old adage? (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps the developers picked the wrong 2 of: fast, cheap, or good.
Developers don't typically get to decide that. Management makes that sort of decision. If folks are interested, a full list of ACA contractors [sunlightfoundation.com] is also available.
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Considering the bill became law in 2010, the fast option should be unneeded. Unfortunately, whoever started this project also felt the other two options were unneeded as well.
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The best part is that USD $634 million has already been spent, with more to come.
Easy solution! (Score:3)
Each state could use resources given to them by the federal government to build their own exchanges!
Oh, wait...
90% done ... (Score:2)
fire SAIC. fire all the defense contractors (Score:2)
Re:fire SAIC. fire all the defense contractors (Score:5, Insightful)
The stupid site won't even give real information until after you sign up. I don't want to give them sign-up info unless I decide to actually sign-up. But I cannot get the info to make that decision with.
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So, make up a fake name, sign up and get the prices and whatever you need. Then, if you decide you want it, sign up for real.
Lets see them clean out those data tables after this.
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You may well be advocating a felony here.
Lying to a federal official is a felony, and for the purpose of the law the site may well be considered a federal official.
Basic rule of project management (Score:2)
Any "percent complete" provided by a developer is nonsense. Especially since the progression you'll typically hear is something like 50%, then 70%, then 90%, then 95%, then 96%, then 97%, then 99%, then "I just have to do XYZ", then "I just have to do ABC", ...
The way you actually figure out where you stand is by having a list of tasks and estimates that are small enough that each task is expected to be a couple of days worth of work at most, and then rate tasks either complete or not complete (and it's not
The Web Site is as perfect as Mr. Obama (Score:2, Funny)
Mr. Obama is our saviour. He is doing what no other leader has done for us. He is giving equality to 99% of Americans. This is important. Health care is important to everyone, and it is now a right we all can have equally for 99% of us.
By us agreeing to have Mr. Obama and the 1% care for us, feed us, educate us, and providing for all of our needs, we are making a better place for everyone.
Mr. Obama is our saviour, we need to obey him, and the wealthy people who put him in power. If we don't Obey Mr. Oba
$400M on a $93M contract? (Score:2)
Hopefully the costs of obamacare are a little more accurate or this could be a very short trip.
It will take 2 years (Score:2)
... at least ... to get it designed right. That's because they need to throw away everything they have done so far and start over. They need to actually build the site rather than try to mish-mash a bunch of separate web products.
That's OK (Score:2)
I'm sure no one will get sick between now and then. And if they do, it won't matter. Because when government hurts people, government always gets a pass.
If They Only Had Obama's Election Campaign IT (Score:5, Informative)
What people don't realize is the private sector contractors in Gov't IT have little to do with regular private IT contracting. In order to gain these contracts you need to basically game the formula used to award the contracts. It's a bit more complicated than just having the lowest bid. A lot of it has to do with things like the number of Phd and Master degree workers you have to offer. This often leads to staffing composed of people who have unrelated degrees or people who are from diploma mills.
The Obamacare IT is no more or less messed up than any other gov't system of recent times.
Sadly, Obama can't just raid Silicon valley for some top tier talent to make a new system. That's illegal. Instead the contracts go to companies you've likely never heard of that specialize in sucking off the gov't teet. I'm sure 1/2 the budget was wasted making a 5000 page technical specification document complete with overdone pie in the sky UML diagrams no one understands.
That's the way things will continue so long as the contracting process doesn't take into account the previous success of the contractors work force.
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Looks like ... (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
We have to code it before we know what's in it (Score:2)
Obligitory: "We have to code it before we know what's in it."
Cost is more than first six years of Facebook! (Score:2)
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I love how all the Slashbots object to NSA collecting information on them, but they can't wait to get a "civilized" health care system like Europe or Canada. They will be falling all over themselves to hand over all their medical records to the gov't.
Re:you really want to know what obamacare is? (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes you think Slashbots have any love for the Obamacare site?
it's supposed to be a "market" but it's nothing of the sort. You can't actually see any products or prices. You are only allowed to "apply" and for that you need "register" and then to provide identifying information that Experian approves of.
If this were any industry website, my response would be "fuck that".
Even if the stupid thing were working as intended it would still be broken. It's broken by design.
Re:you really want to know what obamacare is? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know about the Federal site since I'm in California but the California site is great. You just have to enter your zip code (no registration) and it will show you all the plans in your area along with the costs and all of the details of deductibles, etc.
Easy.
The plans are cheaper than my current insurance so that's good too.
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The Oregon website seems to be working well also. I was surprised by the number of insurance carriers, and the number of plans.
Who knows how long some folks will scream and kick about it all, or if their tantrums will prevent progress.
The lowest tier plans along with subsidies should work as intended to promote preventive care and health partnerships instead of bankrupting folks going to emergency rooms, and leaving the rest of the system holding the bag. It will still leave a lot to be desired, like dism
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:you really want to know what obamacare is? (Score:5, Insightful)
For some reason people want health care that won't bankrupt them. They look at what citizens of other industrialized nations get and want the same.
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What a great idea. Deregulate health care! That will sure solve
That will sure solve the problem.
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It isn't really a big surprise that the most regulated industry, outside of nuclear has the most out of control costs.
What? That's crazy talk. We all know that the health insurance industry is free to do whatever they want with no repercussions. There is no regulation of it at all.
(I hope the sarcasm is obvious there.)
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Libertarians don't believe in legal contracts?
Interesting. Tell me more, please.
Also, tell me what you do with the 20% of your post-tax income you give to charity. Do you give it to only one national group, or do you split it among several local groups?
Re:you really want to know what obamacare is? (Score:5, Insightful)
What, you think that insurance companies will actually offer contracts that don't allow them to terminate the contract (or doesn't allow them to raise the rates to the affected individuals so that they cannot afford to continue the insurance) if the individual's medical costs get too high, unless the law forces them to do so? You must live in some other country.
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And if no policy can be found with such terms, you would die.
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You are under the false impression that an insurance company treats disease and cures medical conditions.
It's the doctors and hospitals that won't treat people unless they are paid that let people die.
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Insurance is a bet. Just like Blackjack Insurance is a bet that mitigates the possibility of the dealer getting a blackjack, regular insurance is a bet that mitigates "something bad and unlikely happened to me"
If you could wait until the cards were shown, it wouldn't be a bet any more, and no one would bother getting it until they needed something paid for. Which is a fancy way of saying that no one would get it at all, because if everyone who bought insurance for some condition needed that insurance to p
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The libertarian ideal assumes that the nautral state of business is competition, when in reality the natural state of business is collusion and consolidation. In a libertarian paradise, one of two things happens:
1. The major insurance companies collude, offering customers no choice in plans. All plans offered have loopholes where the company can easily dump the sick. Customers are given no choice, and insurance companies more or less write a death clause* into their policy,
2. The major insurance companies c
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when in reality the natural state of business is collusion and consolidation.
Interesting, but not the end-state. In a truly free market, someone always crops up to challenge the status quo with innovation, and the cycle begins again.
MCI broke the 'Bells back in the early 1980s, Apple broke the 'traditional' mini-computer industry, FOX broke CNN, Internet pr0n killed the nudie mags and DVDs, Netflix/Hulu/etc is now threatening to kill the physical disc-based (DVD/Blu-Ray) movie industry, Apple's iPhone rose up and slammed the cozy BlackBerry/Palm/Nokia/Carrier relationships, and so o
Re:you really want to know what obamacare is? (Score:4, Insightful)
The other side of the problem is the insurance companies. Most conservative do not want to admit that large coorporation DO NOT want open fair market competition. They want a monopoly, and a large goverment beuracracy to keep things complicated enought that individuals do not know what they are buying. Make the bariers to entry so prohibative that only the established players can play.
The insurance system is the EXACT opposite of a free market. In a free market INDIVIDUALS would be buying their own health care and paying for the doctors and hospitals out of their own pocket. This would quickly eliminate the $40 aspirin. The system we have now pays the insurance companies who have a legal obligation to the stock holders to maximize profits ( minimize payments). A hospital system that will ramp up charges as much as the insurance companies are willing to pay, and a restricted supply of doctors (AMA). It would be much better to have 10000 mediocre doctors that could be seen right away than a few awesome specialists who are great but you are likely to die in the E.R. waiting to be seen by them.
The best system would be to outlaw medical insurance. Health care would quickly come to an equilibrium so that people could afford it.. The next best system would be to have a single party system, or something akin to regulated phone and utility system. The worst possible system would be to have an unholy alliance of governement and a profit driven private industry.
I do not understand why conservative do not understand that big business is the exact opposite of free market. Probably because they are brainwashed by the Rush Limbaugh, and Fox, who are in turn financed by big business (go figure).
30 or 40 years ago, our health care system worked? Then more and more employers started offering health insurance. This skewed the system, so that people were no longer in charge of the cost of health care. It is exactly the same with college. Used to be your could have a part time job and put yourself through shool. Now with goverment subsidies (college loans) and soldiers returning with GI bill, there is no incentive for colleges to cater to those who are unwilling to take out a 50K + morgage on their future.
Re:you really want to know what obamacare is? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the real point - the ACA was a compromise, where the conservatives wanted to avoid single payer, and to keep a large and ongoing role for the existing businesses in the industry, and the got what they asked for. Now, they keep trying to force re-negotiation after re-negotiation, to get more. If we just use the humorous definition of an "honest" politician - one who once bought, stays bought, there are a large percentage of conservatives who can't live up to even that tongue in cheek definition of honest. That's not normal politics. Some people keep saying both sides are part of the problem, because they see both sides making some of the usual back room deals, and some people aren't yet noticing it's overwhelmingly one side that won't stick to the deals they made and wants to keep re-negotiating until the "compromise" is 100% their way.
To the people who have elected a politician who won't stick to his "final" deals, I don't care how popular that rep is in their home district, they weill never be able to get anyting they promise you for you, once it becomes obvious to the people they have to work with that they don't regard their promises to other politicians as binding. There's a lot of new representitives who are already getting that reputation, and you can keep sending them to Washington, but they won't get on any of the powerful comittees, they certainly won't be able to keep any promises they make to you in the future, and they will have literally hundreds of powerful people looking to sink their careers on any pretext possible.
While we are at it, the Earned income Tax Credit was a conservative idea, to move people from wellfare to "workfare". It's an idea that was once too conservative for Richard M. Nixon. It was supposed to fix every "problem" America was having with "entitlement programs". it was conservative politicians who promised that adopting the EITC would mean continuous surplusses and never having to touch Social Security. Now we have a breed of conservatives who keep referring to the EITC as a liberal creation, blaming it on conveniently dead liberals such as Teddy Kennedy, and saying it's "part of the problem", and pushing to get rid of it. Given that example, can anyone honestly claim that the conservative faction will keep ANY parts of the ACA, such as the no excusion for prior conditions rules, or people being able to keep their college age child on their health insurance? If you're thinking that there are some good ideas in the ACA, but as a whole, the thing is too big, complex, and unweildy, I sympathise, but there have been people fighting against every single tiny part, and for moving back to a pre-New Deal model for Medicare as well,
Re:you really want to know what obamacare is? (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but Obamacare does nothing to reduce the cost of health care.
Re: you really want to know what obamacare is? (Score:3)
Obamacare turned a healthcare 'issue' into a healthcare coverage issue! with the assumption that if enough people have coverage the care will be available... The options for folks enrolled in ObamaCare will be very limited, rendering their coverage near useless in most cases.
What good is free birth control if the local pharmacy won't fill the prescription because they don't accept your insurance policy's low reimbursement levels?
What good is free birth control if no local OB/GYN will see you to write the pr
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It's not healthcare, it is healthcare INSURANCE.
You have not found, or paid for, the the healthcare yet.
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The reality of health care in many other nations is spiraling costs, health care rationing, and long waiting times. It's people buying expensive supplemental insurance to escape public health care systems. Some industrialized nations still have mostly private health care delivery and fee for service.
In reality, it makes very little difference for health care and
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For some reason people want health care that won't bankrupt them. They look at what citizens of other industrialized nations get and want the same.
You mean eight hour waits in ambulances [telegraph.co.uk] to game national healthcare system metrics, going to the US for treatment [dailycaller.com] to avoid waits, and crackdowns on treatment for immigrants [telegraph.co.uk]? Americans don't want the first, the second is redundant, and Obamacare will probably rule out the third.
Re:you really want to know what obamacare is? (Score:4, Insightful)
For some reason people want health care that won't bankrupt them. They look at what citizens of other industrialized nations get and want the same.
You mean eight hour waits in ambulances [telegraph.co.uk] to game national healthcare system metrics, going to the US for treatment [dailycaller.com] to avoid waits, and crackdowns on treatment for immigrants [telegraph.co.uk]? Americans don't want the first, the second is redundant, and Obamacare will probably rule out the third.
You dont know much about the UK.
I wasn't asking.
If you did, you wouldn't rely on the Daily Tele(graph) for accurate information.
In the UK, they wont send you home to die simply because your employer doesn't have insurance, or enough insurance. This is what people in the US want. Basic care in the UK or Australia isn't glamorous, but it's far cheaper than the most basic care in the US. In fact top hospital cover in Australia is far cheaper than the most basic care in the US.
People want to know they can go to a hospital with serious problem and not have to worry if they have the cash to pay for it. This is the assurance you have in Canada, the UK or Australia.
Also, you'll find the vast majority of people travelling overseas (out of the country) will be for elective surgery which is usually not covered or not covered completely and optional.
Finally, am I the only one who sees the notion of your employer providing health care akin to indentured servitude? Preventing you from changing employers at will or even taking time off (a sabbatical)?
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This left wing screed brought you by George Soros.
We don't have a problem with that, because it is not the Koch Brothers.
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Care to refute anything I said with facts?
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You haven't refuted anything. Your move.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Here, lets look at your "facts", which are really just half statements with commentary.
*** The fact is that the ACA (aka Obamacare) sets up exchanges for people to purchase insurance from private companies. The government is not providing the coverage -- the private sector is.
You left out the part about doing it with other people's money, aka Taxdollars.
*** And yet there's a hue and cry about "government-run healthcare." Guess what: it already exists, it's called the VA. Single-payer? That already exists to
Re:Giving medical records to private contractors . (Score:4, Insightful)
Here, lets look at your "facts", which are really just half statements with commentary.
*** The fact is that the ACA (aka Obamacare) sets up exchanges for people to purchase insurance from private companies. The government is not providing the coverage -- the private sector is.
You left out the part about doing it with other people's money, aka Taxdollars.
Only if low-income people need help with the premiums. That's hardly a precedent.
*** And yet there's a hue and cry about "government-run healthcare." Guess what: it already exists, it's called the VA. Single-payer? That already exists too, it's called Medicare (probably Medicaid too.)
Forgetting to mention those are huge expensive boondoggles with very poor outcomes in the case of the VA.
Actually, the VA has a high satisfaction rating [defense.gov] compared to the private sector.
***The main point is that medical-insurance coverage is now open to tens of millions of people who would not be able to purchase it otherwise.
Again, open, but at the cost of taxdollars, and for people that don't want the health insurance because they don't really need it, like young healthy adults.
The fact is, nobody needs health insurance...until they do. And then, if they don't have it, we all pick up the tab when they go to the emergency room. And that's where the requirement that we all have insurance comes in. All of us have to contribute to our heath insurance. If we don't, we're mooching. Plain and simple.
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What the hell do you call the nearly $700 million spent on the boondoggle of a website, the very point of this article in the first place, if not taxpayer dollars?!
Uh huh. That seems pretty cheap, compared to the $300 million per day that the pointless government shutdown is costing taxpayers. At this writing, we're in day 14 and the tab is $4.2 billion. All courtesy of the Tea Part Republicans and their Obamacare Tourette's Syndrome.
Yes, I agree - not buying something is mooching. That's when I don't buy coffee from Starbucks because it's overpriced, I'm mooching from Seattle. When I refuse to buy bananas from the supermarket because they're too green, I'm mooching.
So, what you're saying is coffee = bananas = health insurance. If there was ever an example of false equivalence [wikipedia.org], this is it.
You can live without coffee or bananas. But at some point, you will need health care. And if you develop a s
Re:Giving medical records to private contractors . (Score:4, Interesting)
But I can choose not to have a car and not pay a penalty for it. (in fact, one might call it a bonus)
You can't choose not to have a body. And when your body needs health care, are you going to "choose" to die instead of going to the emergency room?
The fact is, you'll become a burden on the rest of us if you get sick and you don't have health insurance.
Where is my choice to opt out in the ACA without penalty?
It's in the same place as your choice to opt-out of paying taxes. Freedom isn't free. Suck it up.
Re:Giving medical records to private contractors . (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps he is a responsible individual that has set aside enough money to pay for an unexpected emergency in the event he gets sick?
Obviously you don't have a clue as to how much it can cost to treat a serious illness. Very few of us have the means to set aside cash for that kind of event.
You know it is possible to survive in this world without health insurance. People have been doing it in this country pretty much since the day it was founded.
Wrong. People die [harvard.edu] from lack of health insurance.
Your negative view of the general population is actually quite disturbing. You seem to feel we need a nanny state to protect us from ourselves.
Actually I'm not concerned about protecting us from ourselves. Rather, I am concerned about protecting us from people like you, who would choose to forego getting health insurance and put the burden on the rest of us.
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I doubt there's any real committee yet, at least not one comprised of people with sufficient project management and technical expertise to competently analyze this train wreck. Everyone working in an upper management role on this project should be terminated, although that's a difficult proposition when some of those personnel are likely the people needed to assist competent personnel with beginning to understand how badly this system is built. So they should be terminated immediately following resolution o
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you're funny. Obama has violated more of the Constitution than even Bush and Cheney.
It is "Obamacare", he used all his collateral to get that mess passed. He and the Democrat Congress owns it. And it's already failing.
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Except you're not factoring in several things. First, the website is not the only means to sign up. You can do it by mail, phone, or in-person. Second, the coverage of the federal exchange is only for those states who refused to set up any form of exchange. That means states that set up their own exchanges rather than throwing it to the federal government have their own separate provisioning. But you're mixing those numbers together.
I forget the third, something about the Department of Education.