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Obamacare Exchanges Months Behind In Testing IT Data Security
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from a Reuters report:
"The federal government is months behind in testing data security for the main pillar of Obamacare: allowing Americans to buy health insurance on state exchanges due to open by October 1. The missed deadlines have pushed the government's decision on whether information technology security is up to snuff to exactly one day before that crucial date, the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general said in a report. As a result, experts say, the exchanges might open with security flaws or, possibly but less likely, be delayed.'They've removed their margin for error,' said Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology. 'There is huge pressure to get (the exchanges) up and running on time, but if there is a security incident they are done. It would be a complete disaster from a PR viewpoint.' The most likely serious security breach would be identity theft, in which a hacker steals the social security numbers and other information people provide when signing up for insurance."
Obamacare failing doesn't serve anyone's interests. And it won't succeed. Its too poorly set up to do anything but fail.
So if you want socialized medicine... this will only make your idea appear stupid or your political allies too inept to execute such a plan.
If you don't want socialized medical care this will effectively give it to you anyway... but it will be even more expensive... badly run... and generally all the negatives will be more negative.
So lets not do this... kill it and restart the debate on it. Does that mean the supporters will have to ACTUALLY get support for their program this time instead of sneaking it through? Yes. But they should have done that in the first place and this is so screwed up in large part because they broke the rules.
I know what the supporters are going to say... that they followed the letter of the law. Possibly by the narrowest possible definition. But you know damn well that you broke the spirit of the law in half getting there.
That said, that isn't the point of my post. My point is that indifferent to all that, Obamacare is unfixable. It needs to be put down like a rabid dog and THEN we can evaluate what our options are after that. But causing American insurance premiums to double is not in any one's interest. Stop it.
If you care about the poor. Stop it.
If you care about jobs. Stop it.
If you care about the country. Stop it.
At this point, the only reason to support it is ego... aka fear of looking like a fool after investing so much political capital into the issue... or ignorance.
That's all that's left.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Forcing successful people to pay for insurance for the dregs of society is just wrong.
Exactly, that's why I love public health insurance. I don't have to buy a 3rd yacht some insurance exec whose daddy got him a cushy job. I get better health care and CHEAPER then I ever got with my garbage "high end" health insurance in the states. Yeah I may pay a bit more than a poor person(and probably pay some of their share), but not having to support worthless execs means that it is cheaper than that private garbage.
Before mouthing off about costs, how about do a little research? Like the fact that the US spends roughly 2x as much(as a % of GDP) than any other industrialized nation(who all have public health insurance) and yet the health outcomes are not any better for all that cash spent. Oh I'm sorry, did I use facts with a Republican? My mistake.
Monstar L
Do you have any data that says they have more issues than private companies who undertake IT systems of a similar size? You are probably just more aware of the failures of the government systems because they are by nature public(obviously excluding NSA CIA etc....). Any sort of large IT system has plenty of places it can fail, slipping deadlines aren't exactly solely a "government" thing.
Monstar L
What's even dumber is the concept of state-level exchanges.
A primary driver of high health-care costs is the balkanization of healthcare across states.
Allow the voluntary harmonization of various states' health care codes, which would in turn allow insurance providers to offer the same plan in several states. The 'health care exchanges' offered in the Obamacare bill would have been a perfect opportunity to allow capitalism to work to lower costs and increase competitive pressures - this plan merely ossifies the state-level segmentation of the marketplace.
-Styopa
Like hell you don't pay a damned thing. Ever heard of taxes? Worse, there's a lot of corruption here hiding massive healthcare failures, including huge numbers of people who are now dead who shouldn't be due to poor care. I wouldn't hold up the UK's socialised healthcare system as an example to follow.