Obamacare Software Glitch Will Limit Penalties Charged To Smokers

turbosaab writes "The Obama administration has quietly notified insurers that a computer system glitch will limit penalties that companies may charge smokers under the new healthcare law. The underlying reason for the limitation is another provision in the health care law that says insurers can't charge older customers more than three times what they charge the youngest adults in the pool. The government's computer system has been unable to accommodate the two. So younger smokers and older smokers must be charged the same penalty, or the system will kick it out. A fix will take at least a year to put in place."

Comments

Re:Obamacare

[Joe_Dragon]

better then the old system where you can pay in to plan for years and when you get real sick they drop you or say you hit the max pay out cap (easy to do when acetaminophen sold for $1.50 a tablet (you can buy 100 of those for the same price at Amazon); $77 for a box of sterile gauze pads (Amazon’s prices vary between $6 and $11); $18 for a single diabetes test strip (sold for 54 cents by Amazon); $108 for antibacterial Bacitracin ointment (Amazon’s prices vary between $2.50 and $6.50)

Re:Ah yes, government control of health care

[AK Marc]

Italy and Greece are the two worst off. Anyone that picks either as an example is clearly biased and looking to point out weeknesses. England is closer to the middle. Not as strong as Germany, but with longer-term socialist leanings, so a nice long history of NIH and such. Does pretty well at it. France is doing on, though their immigration policies have led to some internal discord. And there are what, 20-something others? Social welfare is local and not mandated across. England is doing OK, even with the conservatives complaining about the EU forcing the UK to let in the Poles and such. NIH covers anyone in the EU, if properly registered and in the UK at the time. So people could travel from all over Europe for "free" care, but they don't. Given the free travel amongst all the states, are they really that bad when there isn't mass migration from the bad ones to the "good" ones? Germany *must* accept any Greeks that want in, so why aren't there lines of Greeks trying to get in?