HealthCare.gov Back-End Status: See You In September 251
theodp writes: "The consumer-facing parts of the Obamacare website may now work (most of the time) for people buying insurance, writes Politico, but beneath the surface, HealthCare.gov is still missing massive, critical pieces that are essential for key functions such as accurately paying insurers — and the deadline for finishing them keeps slipping. Without a fully built and operational system, federal officials can't determine how many of the 8 million Obamacare sign-ups announced last week will have actually paid their premiums. The Obama administration earlier this month indicated that insurers will continue to be paid through an 'interim' accounting process — pretty much a spreadsheet and some informed estimates — until at least September, when what is being called 'the mother of all reconciliations' will be conducted, which some fear could reveal the need for a massive correction and rate adjustments. Still, Oregon decided Friday to switch to Healthcare.gov from its own nothing-wrong-that-$78-million-couldn't-fix Cover Oregon online healthcare exchange."
Re:Healthcare.gov is really big deal. (Score:5, Informative)
Obama raised expectations insanely by saying "as easy as buying books in Amazon..".
Having actually used the website (in March, long after it was fixed from early issues), it's pretty much on the same level as Amazon. They have all the information you need to make an informed purchase, including links to each insurance company's list of providers and covered medications. There might be plenty of arguments about big vs. small government and continuing problems with the back end, but they definitely have a very user-friendly interface.
Re:Healthcare.gov is really big deal. (Score:5, Informative)
Being self-employed, my biggest issue is the near TRIPLING of my insurance costs.
Most people, having their insurance paid for by their employer don't see this, and don't care.
However, my biggest gripe about the "Affordable Care Act" is just how UNAFFORDABLE it has made my health care, and how I am now paying nearly as much for a SHIT TIER BRONZE PLAN as I was for what would be comparable to a Gold Plan.
The only upside is I claim that added insurance cost -- oh but wait, that will certainly put me over the $5,000/year write-off limit on my 1040SE, so I have to fill out additional paperwork for my end of the year tax write-offs. BONUS!
Frankly, ObamaCare is the Worst of All Worlds and I will be surprised if it hasn't turned into a complete Consumer Raping within 10 years a la the California Free Energy Market.
Re:Healthcare.gov is really big deal. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:-1 Copied from Republican Talking Points (Score:2, Informative)
(Or he would be, if the law were Constitutional in the first place. SCOTUS says it's a "tax"? Well, tax laws have to originate in the House. Obamacare didn't.)
"The Affordable Health Care for America Act (or HR 3962) was a bill that was crafted by the United States House of Representatives in November 2009."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_Health_Care_for_America_Act
Re:"What difference (Score:3, Informative)
And 6 million lost the insurance they had due to this shit law. Asshole.
Re:-1 Copied from Republican Talking Points (Score:2, Informative)
Every one of these hard radical Right talking points and phony anecdotes that has been investigated has proven to be false, most of the maliciously so. Every single one. But apparently we are supposed to just blindly swallow the latest from the breitbart propaganda machine ?
sPh
What is it with the hard radical right talking points infesting Slashdot of late? Is this a concerted effort to take over the site?
oops, you looked-up the wrong bill. (Score:3, Informative)
The Democrats lost their super-majority in the Senate before they could ram-through Pelosi's house bill as the "Affordable Care Act" and since they were absolutely determined that no Republican input would be tolerated they needed a scheme to solve their dilemma. Harry Reid (Nevada Democrat who runs the Senate) used a tactic of taking another bill, stripping out all its content and then injecting in whatever language he wanted; Harry inserted the ACA language we ended-up (which could not perfectly match Nancy's language for complex legal reasons) into the hollow shell of a bill that had previously worked its way partially through the senate (the bill Harry used as a shell had already cleared the 60 vote "cloture" hurdle) and then THAT mess was handed over to Nancy Pelosi in the House where it should have had to go through reconcilliation (but couldn't because the resulting "reconciled" bill would have needed another Senate vote WITH that pesky 60 vote cloture) . Nancy's team however, could not pass it properly "as-is" because the Senate version had language some of her House democrats did not want to be held accountable for..... so she worked out a scheme to pass a separate resolution in the house that would "deem" the ACA to have passed rather than actually passing it, and that whole ball of wax was what Obama ultimately signed. The "affordable care act" written by the U.S. House of Representatives never actually went anywhere (no matter what a lazy wikipage editor may claim) ..... the Senate's verson is what went through (and, incidentally, this is one of the major reasons it is such a mess - all the normal committee work to unify house and senate bills into a joint bill, which usually cleans-up conflicts between sepearate parts of complex bills written by various interests, never happened).... all those shenanigans were done just to block any Republican input that WOULD have been enabled by the election of Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat. Scott Brown campaigned to be the vote to stop the supermajority from passing the ACA, and he won that election, but Harry and Nancy simply manipulated the process to block the new Senator from interfering in their plans for a pure-Democrat health law.
When the Supreme Court took up the ACA in that big case Republicans believed they'd win and which Democrats still crow about to this day, they ruled that the thing could NOT be implemented using the "Commerce Clause" and with "penalties" but COULD stand if it was all really just a big tax scheme - so they declared it a big tax scheme and let it stand as Constitutional (shocking conservatives, who now see John Roberts as a traitor) ........ which brings us to the lawsuit "Sissel v. United States Department of Health & Human Services" [thehill.com] which points out that the Constitution specifically and explicitly forbids any tax law from originating in the Senate, and given that the SCOTUS has already certified that this is exactly what Obamacare is..... the SCOTUS will be a pack of hypocrits if they let it win this suit. Oral arguments are scheduled for May 8, 2014.
Re: Supposed loss of insurance (Score:2, Informative)
Madness? A colonoscopy -- a half hour, non surgical procedure involving light anesthesia -- with NO problematic results -- is seven grand. If you have NO other medical expenses in that year, your income has to exceed $70000 to make that cost "only" ten percent of your income. If something SERIOUS happens to you -- you need surgery, you get cancer, serious car accident, diabetes, etc., in order to hit or stay under that ten percent of income mark, your income will have to be much, much higher. And since you can't just magically make that happen, instead, you'll lose all your stuff and make everyone else pay more. Or, you can pay a few thousand for insurance and pretty much no matter what happens to you, you're going to be ok.
Now, what do you think the smartest course is?