The Obama administration is set to announce another major delay in implementing the Affordable Care Act

[Acebb]

Oh shock, nobody signing up for this piece of crap:

The new health insurance marketplaces appear to be making little headway in signing up Americans who lack insurance, the Affordable Care Act’s central goal, according to a pair of new surveys.


Only one in 10 uninsured people who qualify for private plans through the new marketplaces enrolled as of last month, one of the surveys shows. The other found that about half of uninsured adults have looked for information on the online exchanges or planned to look.


[h=1]New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys find[/h]

 

[Dave007inVegas]

My work is done. You clean up my mess.

The man responsible for heading the agency in charge of crafting Obamacare rules and establishing regulations for the troubled and unpopular Obamacare exchanges has resigned.
On March 31, the day Obamacare enrollment officially comes to a close, Gary Cohen, a former Democratic aide to Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA), will step down as Director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIO), a subsidiary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Republicans blasted Cohen for "misleading" Congress about the true status of the disastrous Obamacare launch. In October, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), a medical doctor, called for Cohen's resignation.

"Mr. Cohen, more than anyone else, is responsible for the failed launch of the president's health care law," said Burgess. "Not only did Cohen fail in that task, but he misled Congress and the American people throughout the process."

 

[Dave007inVegas]

If you’re coming to Vegas for March Madness you may to make you own bed.

Nearly 10,000 Las Vegas casino workers say they are considering going on strike over what the unpopular Obamacare program has done to their health care insurance. If contract negotiations to keep their existing benefits go unsettled by March 20, Nevada's biggest union, the Culinary Union Local 226, says it will vote to grant the union the right to strike.

"The biggest hurdle to reaching settlements in Vegas is the new costs imposed on our health plan by Obamacare," Unite Here President Donald Taylor told Buzzfeed. "Even though the president and Congress promised we could keep our health plan, the reality is, unless the law is fixed, that won't be true."

The threat of an almost 10,000-person union strike is merely the latest example of unions' rebuke of Obamacare. Last September, Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) President Terry O'Sullivan told AFL-CIO convention attendees, "We'll be damned if we're going to lose our health insurance because of unintended consequences in the law!"

Further irritating the relationship between unions and President Barack Obama was a ruling earlier this week by the Obama administration to deny unions' request for an exemption on Obamacare's transitional reinsurance program. As the Washington Post notes, "It marks the second recent Obamacare defeat for unions. Over the summer, the administration rejected unions' pleas to allow their health plans to access federal subsidies."

Recent Obamacare clashes between unions and Obama could further threaten the odds of Democrats already facing daunting midterm elections come November. According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, just 38% of Americans now support Obamacare.

 

[rolltide]

seriously though why not just implement the fn thing if it's so great? insurance companies have already canceled millions of people's policies so plenty of us have already moved to a "compliant" and more expensive health plan, so just get it over with!

 

[NFLTrends]

seriously though why not just implement the fn thing if it's so great? insurance companies have already canceled millions of people's policies so plenty of us have already moved to a "compliant" and more expensive health plan, so just get it over with!

Well we still don't know exactly the whole ObamaCare thing yet. I say we know maybe about 80% of whats going on, and there are still things yet to go into effect for a couple of years.

Remember this saying "We have to pass it to see whats in it". Well we passed it, know we know most of whats in it... and we aren't happy.

Funny thing is, the AMERICAN PEOPLE are the ones complaining.... yet the Insurance Companies aren't saying a thing. That's what happens when you have secret closed door meetings with healthcare insurers/Pharmacuticals and such when you write the bill.

So yet again, the American people are getting screwed, and the politicians and the big businesses are smiling and lining their pockets.

Just another day in DC.

 

[Dave007inVegas]

seriously though why not just implement the fn thing if it's so great? insurance companies have already canceled millions of people's policies so plenty of us have already moved to a "compliant" and more expensive health plan, so just get it over with!

Mid terms?

 

[Dave007inVegas]

Delusion or denial?

BARACK OBAMA: I am absolutely confident that you will see millions of people benefit from this law. It doesn't mean that at some point there won't be some additional problems, or improvements that we can make. At this point, I think actually it is working the way it should, what we need to do is after the first year, we evaluate what the pool looks like, can we make sure that we're keeping the premiums low. Are there more people that look like we could potentially cover through other mechanisms reaching those who are still uninsured?

 

[Dave007inVegas]

Gentlemen, you may want to alert your parents and grand parents…

A new report by the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics at National Right to Life warns that one of the Obamacare provisions that ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Americans would discover if Congress passed the bill is that some seniors will not be allowed to spend as much as they wish on their health care.

The extreme position was revealed in a special report by the NRLC titled “The Affordable Care Act and Health Care Access in the United States,” which analyzes four fundamental policy areas of Obamacare.

It finds several ways that the federal health care law “will drastically limit access to life-saving medical treatment under the law.”

“These areas include: the ‘excess benefit’ tax coming into effect in 2018, the current exclusion of adequate health insurance plans from the exchanges, present limits on senior citizens’ ability to use their own money for health insurance, and federal limits on the care doctors give their patients to be implemented as soon as 2016.”

Pelosi famously said Congress should pass the law so Americans could find out what was in it, and its unpleasant surprises have been shocking citizens ever since.

The study finds, for example, that the “Independent Payment Advisory Board,” which starting next January is supposed to make “recommendations to slow the growth in national health expenditures,” will set “quality and efficiency” standards for hospitals and demand that doctors meet government minimums in order to contract with any qualified health insurance plan.

“Essentially, doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers can be told by Washington just what diagnostic tests and medical care are considered to meet ‘quality and efficiency’ standards. These standards will be enforced not just for health care paid for by federally funded programs like Medicare, but also for health care paid for by private citizens and by the health insurance they or their employers purchase,” the study explains.

“These standards are specifically designed to limit the funds that Americans may choose to spend on health care so that they cannot keep up with the rate of medical inflation. Treatment that a doctor and patient deem needed or advisable to save the patient’s life or preserve or improve the patient’s health, but which runs afoul of the imposed standards, can be denied, even if the patient is willing and able to pay for it,” the study warns.

The study says that means that Washington “bureaucrats” will set a national standard for care “that is designed to limit what private citizens are allowed to spend to save their own lives.”

“Under Obamacare, consumers using the exchanges may only choose plans offered by insurers who do not allow their customers to spend what government bureaucrats deem an ‘excessive or unjustified’ amount for their health insurance – regardless of whether the insurers offer such plans.”

And there are provisions “allowing Washington bureaucrats to prevent [senior citizens] from making up the Medicare shortfall with their own funds by limiting their right to spend their own money to obtain insurance less likely to limit treatments that could save their lives.”

It sounds like the thinning of the herd is about to begin. And to all you youngins out there, someday you'll be old too.

 

[Acebb]

[h=2]HHS quietly repeals the individual purchase rule for two more years.[/h]What is the point of this law again?

 

[Dave007inVegas]

HHS quietly repeals the individual purchase rule for two more years.

What is the point of this law again?

Single payer. That’s been the plan all along. Keep ObamaCare afloat, whatever it takes. Intertwine it every possible way with the economy that it will be impossible to patch much let alone fix when it inevitably fails.

That way the instead of starting over and actually providing a viable alternative there will be one source and one source only for health care… the Government.

Postponing portions of the law is the only way to keep it alive until there is no turning back.

It is a devious way of keeping dependency the name of the game.

 

[SheriffJoe]

Single payer. That’s been the plan all along. Keep ObamaCare afloat, whatever it takes. Intertwine it every possible way with the economy that it will be impossible to patch much let alone fix when it inevitably fails.

That way the instead of starting over and actually providing a viable alternative there will be one source and one source only for health care… the Government.

Postponing portions of the law is the only way to keep it alive until there is no turning back.

It is a devious way of keeping dependency the name of the game.

 

[russ1945]

[h=2]HHS Buys $2.5 Million Worth of IT Equipment for Obamacare’s Final Enrollment Month[/h]Gov’t Changes Contract Again, in ‘preparation of anticipated traffic’





Healthcare.gov / AP

BY: Elizabeth Harrington
March 11, 2014 5:00 am
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ordered $2.5 million worth of IT equipment to prepare for “anticipated traffic” during the last month of open enrollment on Healthcare.gov, according to contract documents released on Thursday.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced additional changes to its contract with Verizon Terremark, which is responsible for the cloud computing software that exchanges information on the Obamacare data hub.
CMS has already awarded $59.9 million to the company. The agency initially estimated the cost for Terremark’s IT support at $10.8 million, but has since altered the contract 15 times.
The latest three changes came last month. They added more IT infrastructure in “preparation of anticipated traffic” for the open enrollment deadline on March 31.
A contract for “Cloud Computing Infrastructure Expansion” detailed the thirteenth and fourteenth changes the administration has made in its deal with Terremark.
“CMS required additional cloud computing services and support over and above that contemplated at the time of the award,” the document said.
The first change—“Modification 00013”—was required to “improve performance of the Marketplace” at a cost of $890,383.94.
“Modification 00014” was awarded on Feb. 17, providing cloud computing service and storage. The services cost $1,514,012.02.
“CMS executed Mod 00014 to obtain technology infrastructure and software requirements in preparation of anticipated traffic increase for the last month of open enrollment,” the agency said.
The agency also placed an order for a firewall upgrade, which included $56,782 worth of CISCO equipment. The additional services and equipment cost $2,461,177.96 overall.
“CMS could not have anticipated the need to add these additional services,” the agency said. “The modification was needed to obtain on-site support at the [Exchange Operations Center] XOC to improve efficiencies and communications with other Exchange contractors.”
“CMS experienced a surge of traffic on the healthcare.gov website and exceeded the maximum limits on the number of concurrent users,” they said. “CMS believed if the additional were not added urgently, the Exchanges would not function as designed and citizens would continue to have issues using the Marketplace.”
The agency said it could not order the equipment under the normal competitive bidding process because it must implement the law. “CMS is not in a position to take the time to compete the added capacity requirements and successfully implement the exchange program as mandated by law”
With the most recent additions, Terremark’s contract for IT support has reached $62,409,776.87.
The administration is in its final push to encourage Americans to sign up for insurance on Healthcare.gov, and is holding events to target “women bloggers” and young Hispanic women this week. Much of its focus has been on getting young people to sign up, with poor results.
Roughly four million people have signed up for health insurance through Obamacare as of late February, still well short of the administration’s goal of 7 million.
This entry was posted in Issues and tagged Government Spending, government waste, Obamacare. Bookmark the permalink.

 

[Dave007inVegas]

HHS Buys $2.5 Million Worth of IT Equipment for Obamacare’s Final Enrollment Month

They're going to need all the equipment they can get their hands on.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- If the Obama administration's health care plan is going to pass what amounts to its first physical, people have to sign up this month at a pretty speedy rate: 42 times a minute.

That's somewhere between the steady rate you breathe and how fast your heart beats.

Someone has to sign up every 1.4 seconds in March for the Obama administration to reach its 6 million sign-up goal. Enrollment season ends March 31 and as of March 1, sign-ups were at 4.2 million.

The government needs 1.8 million sign-ups in the 30 days between March 2 and March 31, officials said. That's 60,000 a day or 2,500 per hour. That's way more than the daily averages for January and February, which ranged between 33,000 and 34,000.

To put it in health terms, the average healthy adult at rest takes 12 to 18 breaths per minute. The average adult pulse is between 60 and 100 beats per minute at rest. Highly trained athletes can get their heart rate below 50 beats per minute.

It takes about a minute to read this. If the Obama administration wants to hit its goal, another 42 people had to sign up in that time.

 

[SheriffJoe]

Single payer. That’s been the plan all along. Keep ObamaCare afloat, whatever it takes. Intertwine it every possible way with the economy that it will be impossible to patch much let alone fix when it inevitably fails.

That way the instead of starting over and actually providing a viable alternative there will be one source and one source only for health care… the Government.

Postponing portions of the law is the only way to keep it alive until there is no turning back.

It is a devious way of keeping dependency the name of the game.

Good to see the establishment Republicans catching on:

“I believe single payer is always the goal that they wanted. In fact, I think Obamacare was designed to eventually lead us to that point. What I think you’re going to see now is as Obamacare begins to fail, instead of recognizing it as a failure, we need to back and embrace free market principles. I think you’re going to find the left increasingly saying that Obamacare’s failure proves we need a single payer system, so I’m not surprised by it at all..." - Sen. Marco Rubio

 

[Dave007inVegas]

Delusion or denial?

BARACK OBAMA: I am absolutely confident that you will see millions of people benefit from this law. It doesn't mean that at some point there won't be some additional problems, or improvements that we can make. At this point, I think actually it is working the way it should, what we need to do is after the first year, we evaluate what the pool looks like, can we make sure that we're keeping the premiums low. Are there more people that look like we could potentially cover through other mechanisms reaching those who are still uninsured?

Obama reaffirms… All is well!

President Obama said Friday enough people have already signed up for ObamaCare that he is “confident” his signature legislative accomplishment will function properly.

“At this point, enough people are signing up that the Affordable Care Act is going to work,” Obama said in a WebMD interview. “The insurance companies will continue to offer these plans. We already have 4 million people, over 4 million people, signed up."

The president said he expects “a larger number” still to be enrolled by March 31. “The pool is already large enough, the number of people who have signed up is large enough; I’m confident the program will be stable,” Obama said.

 

[Acebb]

The mumbling, bumbling idiot was asked if the ACA was actually affordable and the answer was to cancel your cable & cell phone

Video

 

[BleedingPurple]

The mumbling, bumbling idiot was asked if the ACA was actually affordable and the answer was to cancel your cable & cell phone

Video

It is time to scrap this plan, need to start over and have it lead by a team of experts not politicians. I don't believe him, a family plan for someone making 40 - 50 grand per year is not $300 per month especially if you have more than one child, My buddy makes between 50 - 60 grand with wife and daughter and his came to about $700 cheapest. So either he doesn't know what he is talking about or he is straight out lying which is bullshit either way. I do agree with him that a major problem is people won't get insurance until they are sick but right now the ACA makes it easier for people to get insurance when they get sick. If I were him I would just say let's start this over, the guy tried to rush this in so fast, IE: the public and most officials didn't know what was in the bill just blindly following, because he was believable. Rushing in has made the plan take even longer with the shoddy website and didn't focus on cost cutting.

 

[ScottL]

"The average adult pulse is between 60 and 100 beats per minute at rest."

If my resting pulse were 100 I'd sign up fast. Twice!

 

[mplastered]

The mumbling, bumbling idiot was asked if the ACA was actually affordable and the answer was to cancel your cable & cell phone

Video

Why not? Isn't the government paying for those yet?

 

[Dave007inVegas]

The mumbling, bumbling idiot was asked if the ACA was actually affordable and the answer was to cancel your cable & cell phone

Video

According to Obama, having cable and a cell phone is not prioritizing your resources correctly.