White House knew millions couldn't keep health plans

[Brant Gaede]

Yeah, you're right, Brant. It could have been way more specific.

You get what you deserve when you try to get more back from insurance than what you paid in.

Greg

Let's see. Two years ago I had an accident policy that cost me $1000 in premiums. I was plowed into by some New Jersey harridan (it was a rear ender) they inflected $5000 worth of damage on my auto. I had a $500 deductible which I had to pay and get $4500 dollars in repairs to `completely fix the car. I paid out $1500 and I got $4500 dollars coverage for the repairs. In short I got back three times what I paid. Did I get what I deserved?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Yes... at someone else's expense. And why would you be proud of that when you learned absolutely nothing to prevent the next accident?

Greg

He only drives in reverse now, so the next time he'll get it in the front, not the rear.

--Brant

[moralist]

Yeah, you're right, Brant. It could have been way more specific.

You get what you deserve when you try to get more back from insurance than what you paid in.

Greg

Let's see. Two years ago I had an accident policy that cost me $1000 in premiums. I was plowed into by some New Jersey harridan (it was a rear ender) they inflected $5000 worth of damage on my auto. I had a $500 deductible which I had to pay and get $4500 dollars in repairs to `completely fix the car. I paid out $1500 and I got $4500 dollars coverage for the repairs. In short I got back three times what I paid. Did I get what I deserved?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Yes... at someone else's expense. And why would you be proud of that when you learned absolutely nothing to prevent the next accident?

Greg

He only drives in reverse now, so the next time he'll get it in the front, not the rear.

--Brant

Good one, Brant.

Consider for a moment the perfect choreography that needs to take place for two vehicles to occupy the same space at the same time. Also consider that simply stopping to retie a shoelace affects the timing of every event for the rest of your life.

Greg

[Selene]

Oh my!!!!

Even the Big Dog Bill Clinton!!!!

"So I personally believe, even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got," said Clinton in a recent interview.

Clinton has, in general, been a strong supporter of Obamacare.

And here is a man who would never lie! I mean except for that little 'ole Federal perjury thing...

Or, the - hmmm, let's move on here, nothing to see...

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/bill-clinton-president-should-honor-commitment-and-let-people-keep-their-insurance-plans_766944.html

[Selene]

[Selene]

Another despicable rat disguised as a bloated Senatorial cow with a pearl necklace...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that she will co-sponsor a bill by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) to require insurance companies to continue offering their existing health care plans — a way to make good on President Barack Obama’s promise that consumers can keep their current coverage if they like it.

The cow continues with the utterly ignorant belief that:

“This bill provides a simple fix to a complex problem,” Feinstein said in a statement Tuesday, calling Landrieu’s proposal a “commonsense fix” and urged Congress to pass it “quickly.”

The cancelled policies are Federally illegal under the other sections of the law cow.

The insurance companies are going to have to eat the lower premiums and have to pay out for the mandatory coverages cow.

So, the only political question that matters is who is President O'bama going to subsidize the insueds, or, the insurers cow.

And how much pork you will put in the bill.

See, cow, now you can even cast those pearls before swine.

Kinda getttin to sound like Animal Farm!!!!

Hey, don't worry the productive will have to pay either way.

A...

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/dianne-feinstein-joins-push-to-keep-health-plans-99758.html#ixzz2kTvAmxA7

[BaalChatzaf]

None dare call her Fein Schwein.

[Selene]

None dare call her Fein Schwein.

VERY nice, Bob!

and we can roll right into:

schweinhund - Pronounced "shvine-hoond." German for "pig-dog." A vile insult in Germany, it has come to enjoy a modicum of popularity in the U.S., in either it's original German form, or translated to English

Schweinhund! I piss on your grandmother's grave!

You don't frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your

bottoms, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you,

so-called Arthur-king, you and all your silly English kaniggets.

- from Monty Python and The Holy Grail

[Backlighting]

That's some Halloween costume & look Feinstein has. Wait, it's not a costume? Scary.

[Selene]

That's some Halloween costume & look Feinstein has. Wait, it's not a costume? Scary.

We are on a roll boys!

[Selene]

I would love for someone in the military to confirm this...I do not recall hearing a "peep" out of the media.

Posted: 12 Nov 2013 11:46 AM PST

(Steven Hayward)

A serving military officer writes in with the following:

The sad thing is that this administration already had an example of a big web-based database failure, on a much smaller scale than Obamacare. I’m a serviceman, and what I refer to is the DOD program known as Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System, or DIMHRS. This program sought what would seemingly have been a straightforward goal: to merge all DoD personnel and pay management for all four military services – including Guard and Reserves – into a single system, vice the patchwork of disparate systems that serve each military service as well as each separate component of each service (Active Duty, Guard, Reserves).

Sounds simple, right? Nope. Utter catastrophe. After years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, Secretary of Defense Gates scrapped the whole system, famously quipping that “I would say that what we’ve gotten for a half billion dollars is an unpronounceable acronym.” The Army is bravely Soldiering on (no pun intended), continuing to try and roll out its own version of DIMHRS as the Integrated Personnel and Pay System – Army (IPPS-A), but is doing so in pieces over time.

The point is that if a comparatively small project like putting all military personnel into a single administrative and pay system proved impossible, what made the administration think that something infinitely more complex as Obamacare could be pulled off?

I’ve read separately that the British National Health Service also experienced a massive, multi-billion dollar IT debacle trying to consolidate patient information. Hayek, call your office.

[Selene]

I would love to convirm that this was paid for with tax dollars!!!!

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

A campaign called “Got Insurance” debuted new ads Tuesday hawking “free” birth-control pills, courtesy of Obamacare.

The ads were launched by the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and Progress Now.

One, titled “Let’s Get Physical,” is geared toward women craving “easy,” casual sex.

It features “Susie” and “Nate,” who are described as “hot to trot.” The ad declares:

“OMG, he’s hot! Let’s hope he’s as easy to get as this birth control. My health insurance covers the pill, which means all I have to worry about is getting him between the covers. I got insurance. Now you can too. Thanks Obamacare!”

Another ad depicts a woman who can barely contain her excitement as she stands next to a life-sized, cut-out portrait of actor Ryan Gosling. It states, “Hey girl, you’re excited about easy access to birth control and I’m excited about getting to know you. She got insurance. Now you can too. Thanks Obamacare!”

The new ads sparked a wave of comments on the Twitter hashtag #Hosurance, including the following:

• “Are you the victim of Democrats’ War on Women? Now you’re covered with Obamacare #Hosurance.”
• “#Hosurance, because you don’t think any more of yourself than Democrats do.”
• “Those #Hosurance ads are targeted to females just a few years older than Sasha and Malia Obama. Think about that.”
• “I’m enraged that you’d demean women this way.”
• “Surprised they didn’t use slutty Sandra Fluke for this ad.”
• “Does nobody worry about STDs? Ever? Hook up ‘culture’ grosses me out. Good job, feminists. Y’all are nasty.”
• “So those ‘bro-surance’ and now ‘ho-surance’ ads are an elaborate anti-Obamacare campaign, right?”
• “Sure, ladies, you may be paying $2,000 more a year in premiums, but remember the *free* birth control!”
• “Really? That idiocy was funded with taxpayer money?”
• “Everyone involved in this ad campaign should be fired. The developer, the copywriter, the photographer, everyone.”
• “Brosurance: ‘Let’s drink!’ Lady-brosurance: ‘I can get laid!’ Does this make anyone else uncomfortable?”

The “Ho”-bamacare ads are so outrageous, even a Planned Parenthood affiliate appeared to believe it was an effort by Obamacare critics to “slut shame”:

http://www.wnd.com/2013/11/ho-bamacare-now-obama-targeting-hussies/#OFAz5mW87CIQTXqg.99

[Selene]

Even liberal pundits like Paul Waldman wonder how the Administration does this without Congress. True, Obama has not considered the Constitution to be much of a constraint in other situations. On the other hand, exploding the projected cost of O-care subsidies from $458 billion to $1.2 trillion in just the first six years might be difficult to pull off with a wave of the administrative wand.

The Obama administration is considering a fix to the president’s health care law that would expand the universe of individuals who receive tax subsidies to help buy insurance, an administration source told The Huffington Post.

***

According to the administration source, the White House is “looking at an administrative fix for the population of people in the individual market who may have an increase in premiums, but don’t get subsidies.”

[Selene]

Would someone REMIND ME why we have government!

Posted: 09 Nov 2013 01:14 PM PST

Founding fathers had their reasons but where we have morphed to today - I say drown them all and lets get on with it!

I just received the below from one of my brothers and am posting his note in full.

After the federal government spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the Obamacare fiasco web site ... there were three techy/nerdy guys who work for Google who decided to make the web site what it should be ... a place to go and check out prices without giving the government your life history, credit card numbers, social security number, addresses, children's names, password, password hints, and on and on.

They did it all last weekend and their site is a huge success.

You simply go to their web site and do what 300,000,000 Americans thought they would be able to do and that is simply compare insurance options. They got all their information from the government web site. They aren't charging anyone anything. They didn't get paid to do this. They have done it as a public service.

President Obama needs to fire the thousands of people who are STILL trying to fix up his mess up (not to mention the millions upon millions more dollars) and hire these three guys.

Can we say the government is too big for its britches?

Programmers attempt to build an alternative to healthcare.gov

Yeah, click the above link to watch the two minute interview. It's worth it even having to wait for a damn ad to play.Three San Francisco programmers took on the problems of healthcare.gov and constructed their own version of what the website should be. Meet the team behind thehealthsherpa.com.

THEN go the Health Sherpa website. It takes maybe 10 seconds to fill in very general information to get some idea of costs. It is jaw dropping in it's simplicity.

To Barack Barry Hussein Soetoro Osama Obama - the most arrogant, narcissistic, Nobel Peace Prize Winning/"I'm really good at killing people" man alive today - we have noted -

YOU didn't build that!

Anyone else want government to run any % of your life?

A...

[dldelancey]

I would love for someone in the military to confirm this...I do not recall hearing a "peep" out of the media.

Posted: 12 Nov 2013 11:46 AM PST

(Steven Hayward)

A serving military officer writes in with the following:

The sad thing is that this administration already had an example of a big web-based database failure, on a much smaller scale than Obamacare. I’m a serviceman, and what I refer to is the DOD program known as Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System, or DIMHRS. This program sought what would seemingly have been a straightforward goal: to merge all DoD personnel and pay management for all four military services – including Guard and Reserves – into a single system, vice the patchwork of disparate systems that serve each military service as well as each separate component of each service (Active Duty, Guard, Reserves).

Sounds simple, right? Nope. Utter catastrophe. After years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, Secretary of Defense Gates scrapped the whole system, famously quipping that “I would say that what we’ve gotten for a half billion dollars is an unpronounceable acronym.” The Army is bravely Soldiering on (no pun intended), continuing to try and roll out its own version of DIMHRS as the Integrated Personnel and Pay System – Army (IPPS-A), but is doing so in pieces over time.

The point is that if a comparatively small project like putting all military personnel into a single administrative and pay system proved impossible, what made the administration think that something infinitely more complex as Obamacare could be pulled off?

I’ve read separately that the British National Health Service also experienced a massive, multi-billion dollar IT debacle trying to consolidate patient information. Hayek, call your office.

I'm not in the military, but I can confirm it. A lot of the software development for DIMHRS was done, er, attempted, by various contractors at Stennis in Mississippi. The information technology community in this area is something of a six-degrees-of-separation microcosm. If you're in IT around here, you either worked on this project at some point in your career, or you know someone who did. Either way, the horror stories are well known to us techie geek types. At one point, it was the hottest project going, and anyone who didn't mind contract work wanted a spot working on it. As time went on, though, and word got out what a hot mess it was...... well, the best that could be said about it was that it was a stable contract because the work was never ever ever going to end. That only sounds like a good thing to the laziest IT people, trust me. Working contract developing software for the government is a tenuous existense, but even so, talented software developers do actually want to produce working solutions, not never-ending madness.

The only thing I'd say is inaccurate is that it was definitely NOT a small project. I never worked on it, but I know at least 3 people who did, and it was huge.

[Selene]

I would love for someone in the military to confirm this...I do not recall hearing a "peep" out of the media.

Posted: 12 Nov 2013 11:46 AM PST

(Steven Hayward)

A serving military officer writes in with the following:

I’ve read separately that the British National Health Service also experienced a massive, multi-billion dollar IT debacle trying to consolidate patient information. Hayek, call your office.

The sad thing is that this administration already had an example of a big web-based database failure, on a much smaller scale than Obamacare. I’m a serviceman, and what I refer to is the DOD program known as Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System, or DIMHRS. This program sought what would seemingly have been a straightforward goal: to merge all DoD personnel and pay management for all four military services – including Guard and Reserves – into a single system, vice the patchwork of disparate systems that serve each military service as well as each separate component of each service (Active Duty, Guard, Reserves).

Sounds simple, right? Nope. Utter catastrophe. After years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, Secretary of Defense Gates scrapped the whole system, famously quipping that “I would say that what we’ve gotten for a half billion dollars is an unpronounceable acronym.” The Army is bravely Soldiering on (no pun intended), continuing to try and roll out its own version of DIMHRS as the Integrated Personnel and Pay System – Army (IPPS-A), but is doing so in pieces over time.

The point is that if a comparatively small project like putting all military personnel into a single administrative and pay system proved impossible, what made the administration think that something infinitely more complex as Obamacare could be pulled off?

I'm not in the military, but I can confirm it.

Thank you, Ma'am.

I like to confirm source's statements and having worked in government, virtually nothing surprises me.

[Selene]

"Nearly a month and a half into the dismal Obamacare rollout, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services communications director Julie Bataille told reporters on Tuesday that CMS has begun emailing at least 275,000 people who had gotten “stuck” attempting to create accounts on the glitch-ridden HealthCare.gov, asking them to come back to the site and 'try again.'” - See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/11/13/No-Hope-Left-Obamacare-s-Website-Techies-Say#sthash.yqHIKC1u.dpuf

This article seems to have more clarity as to the problems with HealthCare.gov.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/11/13/No-Hope-Left-Obamacare-s-Website-Techies-Say

Interesting, one owner of a tech company states that is should cost 10 million and be ready in a few months...I just do not understand how they could possibly screw this up this badly.

Apparently, all the system is, is an online form..however, that all depends on what the definition of "is," is."

Where have I heard that before...hmm

I "feel" that this is just one immense data collector for the State. Apparently, you data is not returnable to you.

[dldelancey]

Ah, lawd. Rarely is anything ever JUST A FORM. Those "contact us" links where you fill in your name, email address, and a message? That is about as close to JUST A FORM as you can get and even that is NOT JUST A FORM. CEOs and software salespeople are not the people you trust to estimate time and materials for software development. They will always get it wrong. The same preson who said it's just a form, also said:

It’s automating a paper form. It shouldn’t be that hard.

That's a big tell as to what is wrong with a lot of IT projects. Too many times, all a team does is automate the paper. That's wrong. Anybody who is using technology simply to mimic what is already being done manually is missing the point in a big way.

That said, I'm not excusing the fiasco that is the Obamacare website. From the article:

Data access errors related to the federal hub. In these cases, the hub provides incorrect information from one of the host of federal agencies it’s pulling from. “There’s a lot of data for the first time flying around across different firewalls. The potential for doing something wrong is really high,” he said.

Everything begins and ends with the data. If they didn't design a robust data model that allowed for multiple entities to exchange data in a common language before they starting building the solution, then it was doomed. And they didn't even need to come up with a common language. HL7 has been around since the 80s allowing for this.

[Selene]

Deanna:

Those are the answers that I am getting from friends who write software/code and others, like yourself that deal/create with these engineering systems.

It amused me that you focused on that "form" statement.

It just did not sound "right" to me.

Paper and the digital surface are completely different universes, similar to still pictures and motion pictures/3D.

And that leap from paper form to a digital/electronic surface is exponentionally more complicated.

A...

[Selene]

76,391 in 14 state exchanges and 26,794 in the Federal Site...NY Times does not do math. Total enrolled is 103,185 in the first month.

One point of contention is around the way the Obama administration defines who, precisely, is enrolled.

The administration counts new enrollees as those who have “selected a marketplace plan.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/us/health-law-enrollment-figures-far-lower-than-initial-estimates.html?emc=edit_na_20131113&_r=0

I wonder how many law suits will be filed because of these incompetents.

A...

[Mikee]

"I wonder how many law suits will be filed because of these incompetents."

Call it a new stimulus plan...incompetence--->>brilliance!!

[moralist]

(headline: CBS Sacramento)

Calif. Insurance Commissioner: More Than 1M Californians Having Insurance Cancelled Due To ACA.

Liberal Democrats getting what they deserve: Priceless.

Greg

[Selene]

"Stretch" Pelosi announced today that President "I lied period" O'bama:

...will offer a fix to Obamacare problems as soon as today.

“I think it can be done administratively. The president will offer a proposal today, is my understanding,” Pelosi said at the World Ideas Forum, hosted by The Atlantic.

Obama on Thursday is traveling to Cleveland to speak at a steel plant there.

Pelosi seemed to suggest that Obama will propose an administrative solution, which is significant because a growing number of Democrats are supporting a legislative fix.

(Also on POLITICO: Obama to speak on ACA)

Meanwhile, Pelosi also said congressional Democrats are working on a separate solution.

“We have our own proposal, which we think is really good,” she said. “I think that we’ll see in the next 24, 48, 36 hours something to the effect of how do we accommodate those people."

Hold on to your wallets taxpayers, there is a whiff of subsidies in the air!!!!

[Brant Gaede]

The Republicans should let the Democrats stew in their own juice.

--Brant

more than Obamacare needs discrediting, so does the very idea of government taking care of you; it's time for America to grow up

[moralist]

The Republicans should let the Democrats stew in their own juice.

--Brant

more than Obamacare needs discrediting, so does the very idea of government taking care of you; it's time for America to grow up

I do hope they catch on to what you just said and simply let the debacle run its course. And you're right, the babies are screaming like crazy now that their insurance pacifier nipples have been yanked out of their mouths. I tell you, watching this obamacare clusterf**k unfold is absolutely delicious. Consider all of the emotional histrionics, all the time, all the energy, and all the money that's being pissed away for NOTHING...

...and all because babies won't grow up and pay their own god damned bills.

Greg