Obamacare ? Anyone?

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Obamacare ? Anyone?

Post by Amskeptic » Fri Nov 08, 2013 3:15 pm

Affordable Care Act

Are we witnessing birthing pains or a disaster?

Are you for it? Against it? Do you feel well-informed?
Colin
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Re: Well? . . . ACA Observations?

Post by Bleyseng » Fri Nov 08, 2013 6:36 pm

I am totally happy as we signed up without too many problems and received our Healthcare provider cards already. Yes there are some problems but why wouldn't there be as the GOP cut funding so the whole website was built on a small budget. It works in other countries rather well but other countries don't have one party trying to destroy the whole government...
I voted in our local election and again was amazing at the amount of out of state money to ruin good ideas in favor of distant megacorportions wishes. Fuck them! Leave our local elections alone Koch Bros!
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Re: Well? . . . ACA Observations?

Post by Amskeptic » Sat Nov 09, 2013 8:22 am

Bleyseng wrote:I am totally happy as we signed up without too many problems and received our Healthcare provider cards already. Yes there are some problems but why wouldn't there be as the GOP cut funding so the whole website was built on a small budget. It works in other countries rather well but other countries don't have one party trying to destroy the whole government...
I voted in our local election and again was amazing at the amount of out of state money to ruin good ideas in favor of distant megacorportions wishes. Fuck them! Leave our local elections alone Koch Bros!

From a long view perspective, social security, medicare, even Bush's Medicare D, had rocky starts with opposition frothing at the mouth.

Did your premiums/coverage go up, same, or down?
Colin
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
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Re: Obamacare ? Anyone?

Post by Bleyseng » Sat Nov 09, 2013 6:23 pm

Mine went down....
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Re: Obamacare ? Anyone?

Post by Lanval » Sun Nov 10, 2013 1:02 am

I have to do some more reading. I and the kid are covered under my work policy, but wife is not. We're going to have to cover her somehow, but not sure which way to go.

From an initial look, it's cheaper to cover all 3 of us under the Healthcare Act, but it seemed on a surface reading to reduce our benefits and raise our cost.

For example, I could cover all 3 of us for the current cost of 2 (little bit less) but it appeared that the 5K deductible was in force across the board, which means we would probably end up ahead with our current private insurance over the course of the year.

Now; I'm not sure I read that correctly ~ I didn't get into the fine print on that stuff, to see what (if anything) was excluded from the deductible. In any event, I'm not exactly the target audience (for those watching at home, I make a relatively large amount of money compared to most of the country, though we struggle a bit because we live in an expensive area; thus we have trouble getting insurance at a reasonable cost, but the plan is probably meant for people lower on the income ladder, in all fairness).

I'll update you when I get a chance to look at this, probably over Thanksgiving or so.

ML

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Re: Obamacare ? Anyone?

Post by yondermtn » Mon Nov 11, 2013 10:08 am

My wife and I both have individual plans which we both like. She will NOT be able to keep her plan. This is very disappointing because it was one of the best with a low deductible and 100% coverage. The options available thru healthcare.gov are more expensive for less coverage or have very high deductibles.

I am able to keep my plan, but I will probably join my wife in her new plan so that we don't have two separate deductibles.

Right now it appears that we will be paying significantly more and actually getting less in return.

I think we'll have to wait and see what happens as it appears many will benefit and many(like us) will not.

It sounds like the rates could really skyrocket if enough young people don't sign up.
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Re: Obamacare ? Anyone?

Post by Amskeptic » Mon Nov 11, 2013 5:19 pm

yondermtn wrote:My wife and I both have individual plans which we both like. She will NOT be able to keep her plan. This is very disappointing because it was one of the best with a low deductible and 100% coverage. The options available thru healthcare.gov are more expensive for less coverage or have very high deductibles.

I am able to keep my plan, but I will probably join my wife in her new plan so that we don't have two separate deductibles.
Right now it appears that we will be paying significantly more and actually getting less in return.
I think we'll have to wait and see what happens as it appears many will benefit and many(like us) will not.
It sounds like the rates could really skyrocket if enough young people don't sign up.

I appreciate people sharing their circumstances here. This here is called "Reality" and I can't find any of it on the news.

Note the headwinds being whipped up by . . . the Gusty Old Poops
Here is the letter Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings (Maryland) just wrote to Republican Representative Darrell Issa of California. Makes my blood boil..
November 8, 2013

The Honorable Darrell E. Issa
Chairman Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Mr. Chairman:

Yesterday, you went on national television and made extremely serious allegations against U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, essentially accusing them of lying to the American people about the Healthcare.gov website. You then used these alleged falsehoods to justify your threat to subpoena Mr. Park to force him to appear before the Committee next week to answer your allegations. Based on information obtained by the Committee a full week ago, however, it appears that your attacks against Mr. Park and Mr. Carney are unfounded and that your statements yesterday either misunderstood or mischaracterized the information the Committee obtained. In either case, I believe it is important to correct the public record, and I request that you apologize to these officials for the unsubstantiated accusations against them.

Unfounded Accusations Against Mr. Park and Mr. Carney

Yesterday, you launched a public attack against Mr. Park and Mr. Carney, accusing them of intentionally making false statements about the number of users that were anticipated for the Healthcare.gov website.

You issued a press release with the highly inflammatory and misleading headline,
“ACA Testing Bulletin: HealthCare.gov Could Only Handle 1,100 Users Day Before Launch.”[1]
As evidence for your claim, you released a single document prepared by Quality Software Services, Inc. that “lists the testing status and results for various parts of the Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM).” You quoted from this document the following statement about a “stress test” conducted on only one testing environment:

Ran performance testing overnight in IMP1B environment. Working with CGI to tune the FFM environment to be able to handle maximum load. Currently we are able to reach 1100 users before response time gets too high. CGI is making changes to configuration.[2]

Based on this text, you jumped to the conclusion that the day before the website launch, the full system was able to handle only 1,100 users, and your allegation was repeated by multiple press outlets.[3] You then argued that this document contradicts previous statements by Mr. Park and Mr. Carney. For example, you cited a statement made by Mr. Park on October 6, 2013, in which he explained that officials planned for HealthCare.gov to draw approximately 60,000 simultaneous users.

After issuing your press release, you went on national television and accused Mr. Park and Mr. Carney of misleading the American people. During an interview with Fox News, you made the following accusations:

Jay Carney is paid to say things that aren’t so. But in this case, Todd Park and other people who knew the facts, who had to know the facts. And the facts were from documents we received from lead contractors that they slowed down to an unacceptable level at 1,100 users. Well, in fact, Todd Park was telling us that at 60,000 was the target, and at 250,000 they just couldn’t handle it. The truth was their goal wasn’t, according to documents, wasn’t even 60,000. Their goal was 10,000. They reached 1,100.[4]

You then used these alleged falsehoods to demand that Mr. Park appear before the Committee at a hearing next Wednesday to answer your accusations. During the same Fox interview, you attempted to justify your demand by stating:

We’re going to have Todd Park and a number of other political appointees who were part of this pattern of interference and false statements related to this site. And we are going to try to get to the bottom of why politics went ahead of best practices and good technology. Something the American people expect, that didn’t happen in this case. And it’s the tip of iceberg, that we’re worried about, is if they are willing to put politics into a website, what will they put into your health care?[5]

You also sent a letter to Mr. Park warning that you would issue a subpoena compelling his presence if he does not submit to your demand voluntarily.[6] Your letter completely ignored a previous offer for Mr. Park to brief the Committee in the next several weeks and testify in early December so he would not be pulled away from his current work on improving the Healthcare.gov website during this critical time.[7]

Information Obtained by the Committee Contradicts Accusations

Based on information obtained by the Committee, it appears that you fundamentally misunderstood or mischaracterized the document you released to the press yesterday and that your accusations against Mr. Park and Mr. Carney are wholly unfounded. You appear to be conflating the results of a much smaller testing environment with final production testing of the system at full capacity. As the document you released states, the 1,100 user figure was conducted for the “IMP1B environment,” a testing environment that was only a sample size rather than the full FFM production environment.

The estimates for the full FFM website environment were considerably higher. We know this from the transcribed interview of Henry Chao, the Deputy Chief Information Officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which Committee staff conducted on November 1, 2013. During his interview, Mr. Chao explained—in response to detailed questioning from your staff—that officials estimated that up to 58,000 virtual users could get through the full FFM production website application, which is almost precisely the figure cited by Mr. Park.

For example, your staff had this exchange with Mr. Chao:

Q: On July 19th, 2 days after the committee’s hearing in which you testified, you provided a briefing for the committee. Do you recall this?

A: Yes.

Q: At the briefing, you told committee staff that the system was designed to handle 50,000 concurrent users. Is it accurate that the system was designed to handle 50,000 concurrent users?

A: For the FFM, it is. I’m not trying to—

Q: When you say “FFM,” you mean?

A: The marketplace, the online application.[8]

Mr. Chao also addressed how the results of “stress tests” were used to extrapolate to the full FFM production system:

Q: Prior to October 1st, did CMS conduct any stress tests for HealthCare.gov?

A: Yes. “Stress test” is actually sometimes used synonymously with “performance testing.” Because in performance testing, you introduce number of virtual users, right? Two hundred, 500, 1,000. You know, you’re trying to introduce as many as you can handle in the performance testing environment to see where the breakpoint is. And then, once you achieve that breakpoint, then you extrapolate, you know, from that how many concurrent users, how many concurrent sessions. Because you don’t have a performance testing environment that equals 100 percent the production environment.[9]

Finally, your staff asked repeatedly how many users were expected to get through the full FFM production environment based on the testing conducted:

Q: So how many concurrent users—what’s the maximum number of concurrent users that the system could handle in a test prior to the October 1st launch?

A: The extrapolated figure that we came up with—because in the last remaining weeks, we threw some additional resources of capacity. The test was somewhere around—it was somewhere between 48,000 and 58,000, what we call, virtual users. They’re not real live people in there. They’re accounts that are set up, you know, doing different things in the system. …

Q: And you said that 48,000 to 58,000 virtual users could get through the allocation

A: Inside the FFM application, the online application for enrollment.[10]

Conclusion

This is not the first time you have accused a White House official of being a “paid liar,” a practice that several of your Republican colleagues have condemned.[11] Given that your staff participated in Mr. Chao’s transcribed interview last week—before you issued your press release and conducted your television interview—it is unclear why you did not disclose the information Mr. Chao provided, but instead chose to accuse Mr. Park and Mr. Carney of misleading the American people.

It is evident that the testing conducted for Healthcare.gov was inadequate, particularly considering the very high demand experienced in the first days after the website became operational, and I believe Congress can play a key role in conducting responsible oversight to ensure that millions of Americans obtain the health insurance coverage they deserve. But it is reckless and highly irresponsible to make unsubstantiated public allegations by taking information out of context, especially when the Committee has information in its possession that directly contradicts these unfounded allegations.

Rather than rush to issue a subpoena to Mr. Park based on these unsubstantiated allegations, which could impair efforts to improve the website, I propose that we accept the offer to receive a briefing from Mr. Park this month and that we schedule an additional hearing in December to obtain his full testimony. I sincerely hope that we can proceed in a thoughtful and bipartisan manner as we continue to review this issue.

Sincerely,

Elijah E. Cummings

Ranking Member
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Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
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Re: Obamacare ? Anyone?

Post by Amskeptic » Mon Nov 11, 2013 5:31 pm

Really . . . . think about it. What are the Koch Brothers afraid of? Why have they inserted themselves between us and our free choice?

DAILY KOS
Koch Brothers' Newest Effort:
Fight health insurance reform with Hummers, beer pong
by HunterFollow

You don't need insurance, you have beer. In America today, there is an actual, concerted effort out there to convince citizens to go without health insurance. It's being bankrolled by billionaires (who themselves have one metric shit-ton of access to America's health care system) for nakedly ideological reasons, and the message is that young Americans don't need health insurance because eff it, nothing bad ever happens to young people and if something does you just bankrupt your whole family to pay for it like proper non-billionaires. Again, this is an actual campaign.

“We rolled in with a fleet of Hummers, F-150’s and Suburbans, each vehicle equipped with an 8’ high balloon bouquet floating overhead. We hired a popular student DJ from UMiami (DJ Joey), set up OptOut cornhole sets, *beer pong tables, bought 75 pizzas, and hired 8 ‘brand ambassadors’ aka models with bullhorns to help out,” wrote David Pasch, Generation Opportunity’s communication director, in en email to the Tampa Bay Times. “*Student activists independently brought (lots of) beer and liquor for consumption by those 21 and over. Oh yeah, and we educated students about their healthcare options outside the expensive and creepy Obamacare exchanges.”

Because nothing says I don't need health insurance like big-ass cars and drinking games.
Despite the presence of mascot Gynecologist Uncle Sam, I don't know how effective the effort will ever really be. No doubt some small percentage of future Darwin award winners might drunkenly OptOut their cornholes because an attractive model hugging a fiberglass Uncle Sam head told them to, but among those young Americans who are not currently drinking to excess at a Koch brothers beer pong table it takes a special kind of stupid to actively not want health insurance. My experience is that it generally lasts until the first trip to the emergency room—or rather, until that first resulting bill arrives. That first bill seems to galvanize the thoughts of even the dullest mind.

Once again, for emphasis: This is an actual campaign, in America, today. Billionaires are funding efforts to convince younger, poorer citizens from gaining health insurance on the notably thin premise of meh, screw it.

Eat your heart out, Charles Dickens.
Here is a blog response . . .

by Mother Mags on Mon Nov 11, 2013 at 01:45:15 PM PST
(11+ / 0-)
Well, they've funded programs to convince young people to fight needless wars, to shop at stores that devastate the local economy, to get their news from corporate mouthpieces, to provide tax breaks to people who already make a million times more than they do, to use the Bible to spread hate, to give up rights to their own bodies, and to make it harder to vote. This healthcare smear is just another notch in their "Do this, it's bad for you but good for us" campaign.
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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Re: Obamacare ? Anyone?

Post by weisswurst » Mon Nov 11, 2013 6:57 pm

Soylent green is people
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Re: Obamacare ? Anyone?

Post by Amskeptic » Tue Nov 12, 2013 7:13 am

weisswurst wrote:Soylent green is people
Can you expand this post. I can't figure it out . . . :cyclopsani:
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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Re: Obamacare ? Anyone?

Post by Bleyseng » Tue Nov 12, 2013 1:11 pm

If I remember right, Soylent Green was poop recycled into people food.
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Re: Obamacare ? Anyone?

Post by drober23 » Tue Nov 12, 2013 2:19 pm

Soylent Green was made of corpses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green

The ACA is having birthing pains for sure. A lot of effort has gone into creating and exacerbating these birthing pains.

Yonder, I'm curious as to why your wife's plan won't be available. Is it because it was not ACA compliant? Or because the employer decided to not offer a plan.

A LOT of the plans that are being cancelled are not ACA compliant. Someone gave me this link from Fox News. I was stunned when I read it (considering the source). It does a good job of explaining what is going on with many of the policies that will be cancelled.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/11/ ... companies/
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Re: Obamacare ? Anyone?

Post by yondermtn » Tue Nov 12, 2013 2:37 pm

We really don't know why her plan is being eliminated. Like I said, it is an excellent plan. We have chosen not to spend our resources finding out why. Instead, we are in a rush to find our best option going forward. I really think there needs to be an extension of time to sign up, maybe a few months. As it is we need to decide by December and there is so much misinformation out there it is scary.

It's being reported that fewer than 50,000 have signed up Nationally and not even 1,000 here in IL.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ ... 0612.story

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ ... 4595.story

The second article speculates that the WH will extend enrollment thru 3/31/14. This would really help us feel more comfortable making a decision.
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Re: Obamacare ? Anyone?

Post by TrollFromDownBelow » Thu Nov 14, 2013 6:16 pm

I saw an article in USA today, think the total was 150k and they were expecting 500k. I'd really like to see it given a chance .... like Obama said ... what we had before was broken...not sustainable.
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Re: Obamacare ? Anyone?

Post by Amskeptic » Sat Nov 16, 2013 9:53 pm

TrollFromDownBelow wrote:I saw an article in USA today, think the total was 150k and they were expecting 500k. I'd really like to see it given a chance .... like Obama said ... what we had before was broken...not sustainable.
I totally agree. There are numbers of people salivating at the thought of failure . . . and they spite all of us, because the current system really has deep flaws, particularly the number of policies that have dreadful limits and exclusions and fine print.

That said, Obama is some kind of idiot, a brilliant caring naïve idiot.
Colin
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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