"War Room" Notes Describe IT Chaos At Healthcare.gov

dcblogs writes "U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has released 175 pages of "War Room" notes — a collection of notes by federal officials dealing with the problems at Healthcare.gov. They start Oct. 1, the launch day. The War Room notes catalog IT problems — dashboards weren't showing data, servers didn't have the right production data, third party systems weren't connecting to verify data, a key contractor had trouble logging on, and there wasn't enough server capacity to handle the traffic, or enough people on the help desks to answer calls. To top it off, some personnel needed for the effort were furloughed because of the shutdown. Volunteers were needed to work weekends, but there were bureaucratic complications."

Comments

Furloughed workers

[unixcrab]

Funny that a Republican would be pointing that out :P

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Add something meaningful. This wasn't because of Republicans. This entire fiasco is Government Bureaucracy screwing things up. It's that same kind of bureaucracy that just needs to go away. You can have regulations without bureaucracy.

Re:Furloughed workers

[gandhi_2]

The government employs too many people. We borrow money from China to employ them. Sad as it is, it is too expensive. Federal employees in particular are pretty expensive.

Here's the crazy part. The US Government can simply take more money from taxpayers, then borrow 40 cents from China for every dollar, and they will make ACA succeed by brute-force. They will simply out-spend the problem, using other people's money.

They don't have to show a profit. They don't have to prove efficiency. They don't have to prove competency. They will simply take what they want from other people until it works.

Imagine Stalin's purges if he had made everyone use a website... his communism would have barely purged 10% of Ingushetia before being overwhelmed.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Saethan]

Wasn't it just a few weeks ago democrats were hitching on to the idea that republicans were misguided because even under a government shutdown, healthcare is considered essential and would not lose funding? Pick a stance, guys.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the party that kept sending bills to the senate while the Dems said only "NO, NO, NO! We'd rather have a mandated shutdown!"?

Re:Furloughed workers

[CohibaVancouver]

The problem with bureaucracy is that in many cases they are required to award contracts to the lowest bidder - If they don't, and word gets out, the media slams them. Sometimes the lowest bidder isn't always the best option....

Re:Furloughed workers

[MrMarket]

Add something meaningful.

Go-live fiascos like this are quite common in the private sector. Large corporate bureaucracies can be just as bad, if not worse, than government. The difference is that this particular SNAFU is getting dissected in the press. It's a great opportunity to learn about the complexities involved when deploying large, complex, federated systems. I guarantee you there are people in the private sector pushing these articles to their corp. IT as a way to shame CIOs and CEOs into cutting the red tape, procurement hurdles, fiefdoms, and archaic development methodologies in their own organizations. If you want something meaningful from this event, learn from it rather than pointing fingers at "The Government." These are problems in most large organizations.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. It wasnt the Republicans. It was the Tea Party Republicans, and the those non-Tea Party Republicans too chickenshit to stand up to them. So, no, you're wrong. It was the Republicans.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because if just those furloghed workers had been allowed to come in for 8 days then none of this would've happened.

Or maybe if Obama and Reid had actually negotiated with the House on a bill instead of saying "Hell No, give us the mon-ay because we run 2/3rds of government" none of this would've happened.

The Republicans stood up for their constituency. GOOD FOR THEM.

Re:Furloughed workers

[I'm New Around Here]

You guys are so funny. If a Republican gets into office, and wants to expand government programs because he's a "compassionate conservative", you slam him for spending too much money. Afterall, conservatives can't bash big spending Democrats when "Republicans do it too".

So now a faction of the Republican party gains a few seats, and you bash them for being the example of small-government, budget-conscience conservatives you keep claiming you are looking for in a "loyal opposition party".

So, what is the truth? Do you want Republicans that spend like liberal Democrats, or do you want Republicans that spend like conservative Republicans?

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

No idea how stupid stuff like this gets marked insightful. Employs too many people? compared to what?

borrow money from China to employ them? are you serious?

we are borrowing money to pay for tax cuts to the rich.

we are borrowing money to pay for social security/medicare.

we are borrowing money to pay for farm subsidies.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

at least the senate voted on the bills....the house wouldnt even bring the senate bills to a vote.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

It takes two to tango, and the Democrats were saying no to Republican proposals with equal vigor.

The childlike games played just to prevent spending cuts is embarrassing and shameful.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

"The government employs too many people. We borrow money from China to employ them."

In the 1990s you didn't. You simply had a high enough tax rate to cover the bills and run a bit of a surplus that could be used to pay down the accumulated debt. Then the tax rate was cut on the theory that this would stimulate the entire economy. Instead it seems to have spectacularly enhanced incomes at the upper end. Although an unpopular solution, letting those tax cuts expire is one way to solve the budget problem.

The deficit problem you describe exists largely because the political decision was made to take in less revenue and spend more on programs, because "deficits don't matter", in the hopes that starving government of funds will eventually lead to lower costs, somehow. Unfortunately the people making these decisions have the will to cut revenue, but apparently not the corresponding expenses. The results are predictable. It is an artificial crisis that has been created by doing one thing and not doing the complement to it. The solution is to follow through with cuts that should have been made a decade ago or to reverse the revenue decline.

I agree that the government employs too many people for current revenue, but if you actually want to make cuts that matter, you should be looking at big-ticket government employment, such as spending more than any other country in the world on the military. Sad as it is, these federal employees and the gear they use are pretty expensive too. Perhaps fewer aircraft carriers would be worthwhile to consider, for example.

Re:Furloughed workers

[DoofusOfDeath]

As a former DoD software developer, let's review your comments.

The government employs too many people. We borrow money from China to employ them.

According to the best source of info I could easily find, federal salaries made up just 13.8% of the federal budget as of 2005.

You also neglect some important questions:

• Do we have too many federal employees for the scope of government? I.e., is the problem their efficiency, or the mission?
• If federal employees are getting less done than you'd like, is it because they're lazy/stupid/etc., could part of that be due to the insane set of regulations with which they're required to comply?

Sad as it is, it is too expensive. Federal employees in particular are pretty expensive.

Expensive compared to what? If they don't have to show a profit, etc., then can you objectively demonstrate that they're getting less done than a (potentially) lower-priced contractor?

Also, you fail to mention that there's a very open debate about if / when contractors are a better deal for the government than are civil servants. Partisan thinktanks have no problem making sweeping statements, but organizations specifically charged with reporting truthfully find that there's not enough data.

I hope you're also not going to compare the average salary of all public sector works vs. all private sector workers. Because for the most part, the government doesn't hire people to do low-skilled work. For example, at the military sites that I've been at, things like building cleaning, etc. was mostly done by private contractors.

They don't have to show a profit. They don't have to prove efficiency. They don't have to prove competency. They will simply take what they want from other people until it works.

As opposed to what contractors do? Good grief man, have you ever seen what private sector contractors do? I've seen plenty of silliness and inefficiency in civil servants, but I've seen countless times contractors milking / drawing out contracts, while often getting less done than the civil servants with whom they collaborate.

I suspect you have two basic problems. (1) You're so frustrated with the negative examples you've seen of civil servants, that you simply assume the private sector is more efficient. And (2), you're confusing your complaints regarding the breadth and intrusiveness of the government's self-granted scope, with the quality of work being done by civil servants.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Add something meaningful.

Go-live fiascos like this are quite common in the private sector. Large corporate bureaucracies can be just as bad, if not worse, than government. The difference is that this particular SNAFU is getting dissected in the press. It's a great opportunity to learn about the complexities involved when deploying large, complex, federated systems. I guarantee you there are people in the private sector pushing these articles to their corp. IT as a way to shame CIOs and CEOs into cutting the red tape, procurement hurdles, fiefdoms, and archaic development methodologies in their own organizations. If you want something meaningful from this event, learn from it rather than pointing fingers at "The Government." These are problems in most large organizations.

This times a million. How many Oracle rollouts went disastrously wrong in private industry that it was obvious even to the casual observer (despite corporate NDAs) and yet here we have a bigger project than most, that was actually live on the date that it was supposed to be (despite capacity issues and some lingering bugs) but of course the fact that it wasn't perfect is proof that the government can't do anything right. If this same project were corporate, it would have gone live in 2015, still had only half the features it was supposed to, and bonuses would still be rained upon the CEO/CIO's heads. There's your "free market efficiency".

Re:Furloughed workers

[Mr D from 63]

All I know is that this furloughed worker debate is meaningless in the context of this article unless someone actually believes that the website would have worked properly if they had those 3 more weeks.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

None of the above. Both parties suck.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not, in their world it was Obamas fault, peeeeeeeepoooolaaaaarhuuuuuuurting-cruz said so...

Re:Furloughed workers

[laffer1]

To be fair, healthcare.gov was clearly behind schedule and they released what they had. I don't think the government shutdown caused the problem. It may have made it worse because they had a few less people working on it.

Server capacity issues mean they didn't perform load testing or underestimated demand. Of course, the code wasn't done so it's hard to test.

A small team could have written that website in the time allotted without issues provided the specs didn't change. The cost of the site and the number of people involved is insane and demonstrates the consultants took them for a ride.

I bet it was cheap, inexperienced developers who had no clue how to build a scalable site.

Re:Furloughed workers

[somersault]

So ... I repeat my wife's question: do you REALLY want these people in charge of your healthcare? I don't.

Isn't it an opt-in system? So don't opt-in. I thought the point was that there are a lot of people who can't afford any healthcare. Those are the people that Obamacare is aimed at. Slightly chaotic healthcare is better than no healthcare.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the party that kept sending bills to the senate while the Dems said only "NO, NO, NO! We'd rather have a mandated shutdown!"?

Right, so one party holds up the "pay this month's rent bill" because they changed their mind and want a puppy with it.
Then they send over "pay the rent for the kid's bedroom and dog food", "turn the heat back on and dog crate", "pay water bill and puppy".

When the second party says, "no", can the first really claim "You WANT us to get evicted!!!1" ?

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because if just those furloghed workers had been allowed to come in for 8 days then none of this would've happened.

Or maybe if Obama and Reid had actually negotiated with the House on a bill instead of saying "Hell No, give us the mon-ay because we run 2/3rds of government" none of this would've happened.

The Republicans stood up for their constituency. GOOD FOR THEM.

As opposed to "We run 1/3 of the government so if we don't get EVERYTHING we want, we'll shut everything down."

Re:Furloughed workers

[Rich0]

The US Government can simply take more money from taxpayers, then borrow 40 cents from China for every dollar, and they will make ACA succeed by brute-force.

Uh, isn't that basically just socialism, plus the fact that people want more than what they can afford? They could just spend less on healthcare and get the same result without the borrowing. However, the whole point of socialism is to take money from people who have money and to spend it on people who don't. If you don't like that then the solution is to just let people who can't afford insurance die, which most would not consider an acceptable solution.

The problem with healthcare is that everybody wants to paint it like some black-and-white simple problem with a simple solution, when in reality it is about 500 problems lumped into one big mess. There are lots of issues that drive up costs. There are lots of issues that discourage preventative care. There are lots of issues with who gets cared for. There are lots of administrative issues with paying a fair price for the work that gets done. There are lots of issues with trying to figure out what the best way to take care of a sick person actually is.

Everybody like to just pick one thing and point out a simple solution to it. Just let ERs turn away the indigent and now hospitals are solvent (just be sure to budget more money for the morgue, both for those who can't afford care and also for those who left their wallets at home when they keeled over). Just set the reimbursement rate for a particular treatment at $10 and now it doesn't cost much to pay for it (ignore the fact that nobody will provide the treatment any longer). Let the market freely set prices (and ignore the fact that consumers have little ability to shop around while unconscious). Every complicated problem has a simple solution that won't work...

Re:Furloughed workers

[I'm New Around Here]

Yes, I agree. Look at my sig below for an idea of what I would rather have at this point.

But that isn't the point of criticizing Republicans who want to limit the federal government.

Re:Furloughed workers

[njnnja]

Although these problems are bound to occur in any large organization, their impact is disproportionately large when a monopolist power screws up. In areas where there is competition, people at least have alternatives (even if they aren't ideal). When Apple launched a broken maps app, people used Google maps on safari until Google released their own app. Windows 8 sucks? Buy a Mac, an iPad, or Galaxy Tab. But for a federal government fail, the alternative is to, what, move to Canada?

But both conservatives and liberals can take away valid arguments from this; liberals can say that in order to get government to do all the things that we (for certain definitions of "we") want then we have to be willing to spend the money to do it right, and conservatives can say that having the government run (for certain definitions of "run") something creates a single point of failure and should therefore be avoided.

Re:Furloughed workers

[MrMarket]

do you REALLY want these people in charge of your healthcare? I don't.

Congrats you baited me. The Government is not in charge of your healthcare any more than the SEC is in charge of your stock portfolio. ACA created a regulated market for private insurance. The person deciding whether or not you get surgery is a medical director at a *private* insurance company. Not a government official. If anything, ACA made it harder for insurance companies to deny coverage for certain types of care. This Republican talking point is way over-played and not based on facts.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Albanach]

So ... I repeat my wife's question: do you REALLY want these people in charge of your healthcare? I don't.

Does your wife really think that insurance companies don't make errors with billing, coding or paying the bills?

Next time you're in your doctor's office, ask them how much effort it is to work with the various insurance companies. Should you be in a hospital, ask the doctor how much time is lost in disputing the necessity of treatment with insurance companies, or how many patients opt for less than optimal treatment because an insurance company bureaucrat interprets a rule differently from other staff at the very same firm.

Re:Furloughed workers

[_Sharp'r_]

The problem with your analysis is that you have the facts wrong.

If you look at a chart of revenue and spending in constant dollars, you'll see that after the 1998 tax cuts, revenue increased until the dot.com bust in 2000. Revenue was down until the 2001 & 2003 Bush tax cuts, after which it increased until the housing bubble burst in 2007/08. Tha major tax cuts in the era you're talking about weren't followed by revenue decreases in the years right after they took effect. Revenue right now is about average for the last 15 years, down a bit because it follows the state of the economy and the economy overall is still down. Minor changes in tax rates don't affect revenue that much. Annual revenue is UP about a trillion dollars since 1980, so it's not like we've suddenly had less revenue than ever before.

Spending is the the obvious issue. Since 1980, spending is up $1.8 Trillion (still constant, i.e. inflation adjusted dollars). Since 2000, it's up over a Trillion dollars.

Bottom line, revenue is way up. Spending is just way, way more up. Revenue has gone in the desired direction. The issue is that Spending has gone in the wrong direction if we want to solve anything related to debt and deficits.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

"U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has released 175 pages of "War Room"

I'm not sure of this Prepubican's stance but I would assume he was one of the many that wasted tax payers money and time trying to destroy the "Affordable Health Care Act" instead of pushing for experienced IT crews at a cheaper cost to help build the healthcare.gov web site.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny that you think that continued spending is ok. Please pay my share of the national debt.
Funny that you think is is a difference that matters between Republicans and Democrats. They both want to spend more of the taxpayers' money, they just want to spend it on different things.
Where is the opt out button?

Re:Furloughed workers

[night_flyer]

healthcare.gov was opened to the public Oct 1st, the gov't shutdown started Oct 1st... anyone blaming furloughs for its problems is being disingenuous at best... and the gov't had 3 YEARS to get the site up and running

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Happened to me.

In 1981 I received SSI benefits because my father was disabled.
In 2012 I received a letter from the Social Security Administration saying they had overpaid me in 1981 and I owed them money.
After over 30 years!
I sent letter after letter, with the appropriate appeal form. They ignored all of them.
Just kept sending increasingly threatening letters. By the way, they were sending the letters to an address I ahve not lived at for over 30 years. Even though they have my current address.
I called, they could not help. Eventually someone was able to change the address.
They then sent a wage garnishment to my employer.
I called, reached a person who said 'fine, we'll reverse this'. But they didn't actually tell anyone.
So my employer deducted it from my wages. How embarrassing is that? They said I had to work it out with SSA.
And after that, the IRS deducted it from my tax refund. They too said I had to work it out with SSA.
Then I get a letter from the SSA saying 'we have recalculated your benefits and we owe you money'.
They sent me a check for over double what the had garnished from me.

No doubt i will get another letter in the future telling me I owe them money

Re:Furloughed workers

[T.E.D.]

You mean the party that kept sending bills to the senate ...

...without making any attempt whatsoever to make those bills something that could pass in said senate?

Yeah, them.

Note that the Senate during this time also sent a bill to the house. By all accounts, it was a bill that would have passed in the house with flying colors, and the POTUS would have signed. It would also have represented a tremendous victory for Republicans, cutting food stamps by 4 billion dollars, and all sorts of other assorted (IHMO evil) cuts to the poor that Republicans were wanting. In the Bush era a Republican house would have jumped right on this.

The house's Republican leadership wouldn't bring it up for a vote. In fact, they changed their own rules specifically to prevent anyone from being able to bring this passable bill up on the House floor. Why not take a big legislative victory? Because the Republicans in the House don't care about legislative victories. They wanted to shut the government down. Simple as that.

Re:Furloughed workers

[I'm New Around Here]

I don't have a problem with someone posting a small comment as an AC to preserve modding in general articles.

But I will agree that the AC had a long post with "insider knowledge" that is beyond appropriate.

If you have detailed knowledge of a story, choose to either mod or comment.

Re:Furloughed workers

[I'm New Around Here]

So ... I repeat my wife's question: do you REALLY want these people in charge of your healthcare? I don't.

Does your wife really think that insurance companies don't make errors with billing, coding or paying the bills?

Next time you're in your doctor's office, ask them how much effort it is to work with the various insurance companies.

Ask them which is worse - the insurance companies or Medicare?

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if you have to pay a penalty.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

The class warfare is strong in this one. Moving to the dark side he is.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

As a rational private citizen, not on the government payroll, lets review your comments.

According to the best source of info I could easily find [answers.com], federal salaries made up just 13.8% of the federal budget as of 2005.

According to the best source of info I could easily find [https://www.cbo.gov/publication/42921], federal workers are paid too much.

"Overall, the federal government paid 16 percent more in total compensation than it would have if average compensation had been comparable with that in the private sector, after accounting for certain observable characteristics of workers.

You also neglect some important questions:

        Is the scope of the federal government too large ? I.e., have they destroyed freedom to create a nanny state ?
        If federal employees are getting less done than you'd like, is it because they have 0 accountability to the public ? Could part of that be due to the fact that they take money from citizens with a gun to their head, and have no incentive to work faster or smarter or at lower cost ?

Expensive compared to what? If they don't have to show a profit, etc., then can you objectively demonstrate that they're getting less done than a (potentially) lower-priced contractor?

Expensive compared to the private sector, by 16% each, after accounting for all factors, according to the CBO. As for how much they get done, the answer is, nothing. They get nothing done, because, government employees do not contribute to productivity. They are all administrative overhead to an otherwise productive private sector.

Also, you fail to mention that there's a very open debate about if / when contractors are a better deal for the government than are civil servants. Partisan thinktanks have no problem making sweeping statements, but organizations specifically charged with reporting truthfully find that there's not enough data.

Well, it'd be nice if contractors were used, but the fact of the matter is, the bulk of the work for healthcare.gov was handed to the administrations cronies.

I hope you're also not going to compare the average salary of all public sector works vs. all private sector workers. Because for the most part, the government doesn't hire people to do low-skilled work. For example, at the military sites that I've been at, things like building cleaning, etc. was mostly done by private contractors.

The CBOs data suggests you are just flat out wrong concerning this statement.

As opposed to what contractors do? Good grief man, have you ever seen what private sector contractors do? I've seen plenty of silliness and inefficiency in civil servants, but I've seen countless times contractors milking / drawing out contracts, while often getting less done than the civil servants with whom they collaborate.

So the federal government does not behave responsbily with tax payers money and fails to properly manage its contractors. Agreed.

I suspect you have two basic problems. (1) You're so frustrated with the negative examples you've seen of civil servants, that you simply assume the private sector is more efficient. And (2), you're confusing your complaints regarding the breadth and intrusiveness of the government's self-granted scope, with the quality of work being done by civil servants.

I suspect you have two basic problems. (1) You derive your income as a contractor, who is all too happy to keep milking the taxpayers and the federal government while not delivering anything of any real value, in any sane amount of time, in any satisfactory level of quality. And (2), you're confusing the justification of your own actions with actions that are truly just.

Re:Furloughed workers

[taiwanjohn]

Simple solution: Just say, "My username is _____, I'm just posting as AC to preserve mod points."

Re:Furloughed workers

[Enry]

So ... I repeat my wife's question: do you REALLY want these people in charge of your healthcare? I don't.

They're not in charge of your healthcare. They're in charge of making sure you get healthcare from a qualified insurance company and have the ability to discuss your medical needs with a qualified doctor.

Re:Furloughed workers

[somersault]

Do you mean taxes, or potential lack of health care?

Having to pay more taxes is a fair enough point I suppose, though I consider it quite a selfish one. If your government cut back to less than a trillion dollars of military spending per year (that might sound like an exaggerated joke number, but it's not..) then you could potentially have lower taxes as well as nice things like national healthcare. Maybe you consider that military spending an investment in the future of the oil market, I don't know..

If the penalty is potentially having no healthcare.. then like I said, it's no worse than definitely having no health care.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Links to OWS do I see.

Re:Furloughed workers

[sycodon]

Notice that none of the Big Government/High Tax sycophants has bothered trying to respond.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC because I'm modding in this thread.

I thought posting, even as AC, would cancel the mods? Has that been changed?

Re:Furloughed workers

[Kelbear]

My son turned 1 year old 2 weeks ago. We're STILL dealing with incorrect billing issues from his birth.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Above]

Please try again. This time plot revenue and spending as a percentage of GDP. I'll save you some time, go here to see it.

You are correct that spending is up, even as a percentage of GDP. The budget should be reviewed, as some of the causes are cyclical (the recession) and will "self solve" as the economy improves, while others are structural issues, like devoting an ever larger chunk of the budget to military and war expenditures over the past decade.

But it's just as important to realize that as a percentage of GDP revenue is down. Those tax cuts mean the government is taking in a smaller percentage of economic output. So when inflation drives up the cost of guns/tanks/healthcare/office space/contractors for the government there isn't a corresponding increase in revenue to off set it, because we've chosen to end taxes on a number of things that get inflated (like the wealthiest 1%'s salaries).

Your bottom line is wrong. Revenue is up in dollar amount, but down as a percentage of the economy. Spending is up by both measures. Revenue has not kept pace with economic growth. To solve the debt and deficits we must both lower spending and raise tax revenue, ideally by closing loopholes and credits, rather than raising the marginal rates.

Re:Furloughed workers

[NatasRevol]

Who the fuck cares?

Mod points aren't actual things.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

"So ... I repeat my wife's question: do you REALLY want these people in charge of your healthcare? I don't."

This is more like your employer setting up a broken website for you to enroll in healthcare when you get hired. Maybe your employer choose a shitty insurance provider, maybe the website is broken. But your employer (and the government in this case) isn't "in charge of your healthcare", though yes, they can and might cause you to choose a shitty provider, but you can still go out on your own and do it yourself, no one is forcing you to use the healthcare website to buy insurance, they are just forcing you to buy insurance of some kind, from some where.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

The Democrats said that.
The Republicans said 'We'll fund everything except Obamacare. We need to work out some issues on that first'

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing Obamacare isn't Medicare then. Right?

Re:Furloughed workers

[Kelbear]

Wait, what "compassionate conservatism" have you seen bashed on this site? Not calling you out here, I just really can't think of a politician pushing compassionate conservatism since Obama got elected, and certainly not on a platform loud enough to have been discussed on /.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you actually read the CBO document? I have read it and it says the exact opposite of what you believe it to say. As an example, you said:

...Because for the most part, the government doesn't hire people to do low-skilled work. For example, at the military sites that I've been at, things like building cleaning, etc. was mostly done by private contractors.

The CBOs data suggests you are just flat out wrong concerning this statement.

The CBO report says, and I quote: "Both high and low wages tend to be less prevalent in the federal government than in the private sector, so the range between those wages—the dispersion of wages— tends to be narrower for federal employees." The report that you reference also states that employees with less than a high school diploma are overpaid compared to their private counterparts by 21%, while doctoral-level employees are underpaid by 23%.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

And then the Republicans decided to no-show time, and time, and time again after being invited to work out those very issues.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure the military is our biggest spending item. Especially over the last 30 years that has seen our debt go from $1T to $16T.

Ironically, every Republican president since 1980 has at least doubled the national debt.

Reagan - from $1T to $3T
Bush Sr - from $3T to $6T
Bush Jr - from $5T to $11T

But somehow Democrats are the tax & spend party. Which is actually fiscally responsible from a government point of view.

Re:Furloughed workers

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

In areas where there is competition, people at least have alternatives (even if they aren't ideal).

In a competitive race to the bottom, all alternatives are equally unacceptable. Competition alone can not and will not magically make things better or even make them tolerable. There is little difference between a monopolists poor service and the poor services of an entire industry.

Re:Furloughed workers

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

If you look at a chart of revenue and spending in constant dollars, you'll see that after the 1998 tax cuts, revenue increased until the dot.com bust in 2000. Revenue was down until the 2001 & 2003 Bush tax cuts, after which it increased until the housing bubble burst in 2007/08. Tha major tax cuts in the era you're talking about weren't followed by revenue decreases in the years right after they took effect.

Translation: The government cut taxes and relied on the capital gains windfalls from speculative bubbles to fund itself. This went about as well as you would expect.

Re:Furloughed workers

[gsslay]

"put it to you this way: you've seen how things work here. Do you really want the same people deciding whether or not your mother can have surgery?"

Oh if only everything was a simple as the private sector!

"Have they paid us lots of money in the past? Can they afford to give us a lot of money now? No? No surgery for mother then. Next case!"

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Put the difference in a money market account or something and don't touch it. Periodically spend the interest on beer.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if you log out first. At that point it's simple AC sock-puppetry.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

And then the DEMOCRATS decided to no-show time and time and time again after being invited to work out those very issues.

FIFY

Re:Furloughed workers

[dosilegecko]

Except in most private corporations, the roll out of a huge program like this would not be something that was forced upon the citizens of a whole country while also seizing control of 1/6 of its economy. You DO see a difference here between that a the new roll out and something optional right? Right?

Re:Furloughed workers

[Metrol]

The Government is not in charge of your healthcare any more than the SEC is in charge of your stock portfolio.

Oh really? So, the SEC will fine me for not being invested in a minimum government approved set of funds, that I may or may not need? Will the SEC shut down funds that are not diversified in the manner in which the government has determined must be put in place in order to further finance other investors that don't have as much to invest?

ACA created a regulated market for private insurance

All private insurance was already heavily regulated! All the ACA did was create thousands of new government jobs and rake in half a billion dollars in new lobbying by the insurance companies... that you had best be buying a product from or have the IRS forcibly take those funds from you. Hooray freedom!

If anything, ACA made it harder for insurance companies to deny coverage for certain types of care.

That could have been handled in a 10 page bill. If this had anything at all to do with actually taking care of people, a bill focused on chronic illness would have seen bipartisan support, and cost a wee bit less than the additional trillion a year this beast is putting on to our debt.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

>FIFY

Nope. Nice, self-induced memory hole you have there, retard.

Re:Furloughed workers

[bhlowe]

That is true, but in this instance, this was a no-bid contract. And for hundreds of millions of dollars (do you realize how many programmer hours that buys?!) this is a fiasco. Just wait until it starts working and healthy working people realize how much they're going to have to spend to subsidize all the lower-income and non-workers. This is going to be a spectacular disaster.

Re:Furloughed workers

[ColdWetDog]

And it just might be even more complicated than both of you think. Yes, the insurance company is a private corporation, but it is following book loads of rules promulgated by the Federal Government. Yes, for all practical purposes, the Government is in charge of your healthcare.

Yes, the ACA made it harder for the insurance companies to do some things, like drop you for pre existing conditions, but the insurance companies recieved lots of carrots for that particular stick. The big failing of the ACA, IMHO, is that it did not come down hard enough on the insurance companies - they are the big winners in all of this.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

So don't use the exchanges and buy your healthcare the old fashioned way.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the best source of info I could easily find [https://www.cbo.gov/publication/42921], federal workers are paid too much.

Whoa, whoa,whoa. This article says that Federal employees are paid MORE-- that doesn't mean that they are paid TOO MUCH. It may be that private workers are underpaid, which many of them certainly are, with government/taxpayers left to pick up their expenses (see minimum wage workers, for example). People can "afford" to work at McDonalds only because taxpayers support numerous services and programs that literally make it possible for them to survive. That's a subsidy to the private system that we are all paying for and that support their ability to pay almost nothing to workers.

The article you cited points out that "Federal workers tend to be older, more educated, and more concentrated in professional occupations than private-sector workers." That's another reason they may cost more. Federal jobs may require more reliable, more highly skilled, and more educated people than the private sector-- even in similar industry-- as the private sector may be more willing to take existential risks to save payroll in a way the government cannot do.

The article also suggests that considering benefits, private workers also get screwed-- the quality of life for a federal worker is also higher. That alone is an argument in favor of moving private workers up to the standards of federal employee levels, not vice-versa. You also, your conclusion fails to consider that often the federal and private employers compete with each other for workers. Higher wages for federal workers may have the beneficial side benefit of raising the market value of the private workers, leading to increased economic activity. Without the higher paid federal workers, we can expect that EVERYONE would be paid less.

government employees do not contribute to productivity. They are all administrative overhead to an otherwise productive private sector.

That is just insane. And since I'm anticipating you'll "accuse" me of being a government contractor, let me point out that I am not--I have worked only in the private sector my entire career, but I acknowledge and value the government's obvious role in promoting and maintaining the very existence of a free market because it (in the best case) maintains a playing field, rules, currency, and a structure where the private sector can operate. Ecepting of course, when the private sector is able to influence, corrupt, or eliminate useful government services too efficiently via bribes, lobbying, kickbacks, misinformation campaigns, etc. Which is unfortunately more frequent, in part due to anti-government, anti-worker arguments you're parroting, which tend to lead to things going off the rails (see 2008 economic meltdown, a runaway, expensive military contract industry, $7b year subsidies to oil companies, excessive deregulation, unnecessary/expensive wars, etc.).

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

The largest expansions in government spending (since 1980) were under Reagan and GWB. Clinton rolled it back to the point we had surplus revenue. Obama's spending has been well below W's, and he would like to undo a mess of debt and deficit, but that would require getting realisitc about raising revenue,

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words you don't realize that as a healthy person you already subsidize the uninsured. Hospitals have to charge insured people so much in part because they have to cover the costs of all the people that have to treat who don't have insurance. So imagine if those people did have insurance! Of course you're going to have to help them pay for their insurance since the net affect is probably pretty minimal on a healthy person with insurance.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

A simple Google search would have shown you that the fiscal 2012 DOD budget was $671 billion not "trillions". The common lib-tard mistake is the price of the overall budget. Add in the redistribution sections (social security, unemployment, medicare) and it jumps up to $3.8 trillion.

I'd me more than happy to cut DOD spending as long as there's a meaningful overall of the redistribution systems.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm moderating right now, and all y'all are gonna get effed! i just moderated in my shorts!

Re:Furloughed workers

[edibobb]

net effect

Re:Furloughed workers

[blackraven14250]

How is allowing (not requiring - they don't have to participate in the exchanges) insurance companies around the country to compete in a marketplace seizing control of a full sixth of the economy?

Re:Furloughed workers

[Lumpy]

Actually you will get police at your door arresting you for fraud, how dare you cash that check they send you.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of

"Overall, the federal government paid 16 percent more in total compensation than it would have if average compensation had been comparable with that in the private sector, after accounting for certain observable characteristics of workers.

do you not understand ? It's right from the report.

Let me reword it for you, in the hopes that you don't miss the point again.

Overall ( after accounting for the entire picture, including all the exceptions and end cases you tried to fabricate ),

paid 16% more than it would have if average compensation was comparable with that in the private sector ( translation, government employees enjoy 16% more in compensation than the private sector who funds them ),

after accounting for observable characteristics of workers. ( all those OMG exceptions your mind is racing to fabricate and include, are already included ).

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Bottom line, revenue is way up. Spending is just way, way more up. Revenue has gone in the desired direction. The issue is that Spending has gone in the wrong direction if we want to solve anything related to debt and deficits.

With the baby boomer generation rapidly retiring, government spending is bound to increase. You can repeal government programs, but you cannot repeal demographics.

Re:Furloughed workers

[LifesABeach]

It's a hell of a friday. My first thought was, "how's that Out Sourcing working for you Mr. President?" There are smart asses, and grand parents running e-commerce sites more complex than the ACA. When it comes to insurance web sites, the successful business model is: 1. get some kind of name, phone, and address. 2. get credit card information, or get ready to send a bill through snail mail. 3. suggest today's special and give a list of "others." Side note here, it's always better to put something in the hands of a client than nothing. 4. remember to say, "thank you" and move on to the next client. Let customer service verify, and call back, to get data right. You already have their money, now it's time to be a hero to the client. The American people paid $88 million for what one can get done via CraigsList at about $50 an hour, and have it up and running in about 30 days. Go figure.

Of course firing the CIO(?) or COO(?) at Medicare, and that choke point evaporated, was a telling event.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: The government cut taxes and relied on the capital gains windfalls from speculative bubbles to fund itself. This went about as well as you would expect.

Thereby demonstrating that economics is anything but a science, and is completely bound by ideology.

It's like trickle-down economics. There's no evidence it works, but people believe it works because it matches their ideology of lowering taxes for corporations and the wealthy.

Which makes most discussions about economics tied to what you believe the economy does, and what it should do. It's wishful thinking -- "if only you'd listen to me and do this, this would happen" completely devoid of any actual empirical evidence, and much more like religion than any form of objective science.

And, this post will be immediately followed by people telling us about the Austrian school of economics and how awesome it is, because they always do.

Even Alan Greenspan has more or less admitted that a lot of his assumptions about how the economy works were, in retrospect, completely wrong.

Re:Furloughed workers

[somersault]

I did do a Google search, and this is what I was found.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

...the government in this case) isn't "in charge of your healthcare"

Bullcrap. The gov is assuming control over what gets paid for, how you spend money on healthcare, whether you are penalized for your lifestyle choices and it places physicians and other providers into all kinds of regulatory and fiscal straitjackets which will drive providers out of the business and dramatically lower the quality of people who become doctors and nurses in the first place. And, incidentally, Obamacare makes it possible for the gov to use access to healthcare as a political weapon. There is a reason that the same fellow traveler in the IRS who was using bureaucratic obstruction to suppress Tea Party activity has been put in charge of the IRS enforcement of Obamacare. This isn't just some minor tweak to buying insurance. It will completely rearrange society.

... they are just forcing you to buy insurance of some kind

No. They are forcing everyone to buy insurance of a particular type, not just "some kind", and the "particular type" will be defined by a political process in which citizens have no input.

, from some where.

No. Obamacare is designed to destroy the private health ins. industry. Obama himself has publicly said that Obamacare will eventually lead to a single payer system which is what he says he wants. Forget choosing an ins. policy. Everyone will be on Medicaid in the near future. No choices. No appeals. Pay your hefty healthcare tax or the IRS will come after you. Criticize gov policies on any issue and you or your family member will discover that a "bureaucratic snafu" is preventing you from getting treatment. Only politicians and the very wealthy will be able to avoid the horror of this monstrosity.

Re: Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Slightly chaotic, sure... Completely dysfunctional is what we have. Where in the world did yo get the information that the system is "slightly chaotic"? One person has successfully signed up in NC, and they can't process his payment, so his registration isn't complete. "Slightly chaotic"... You have to come up with better spin/rhetoric/lies to get that to work. Tens of millions of existing plans are now gone because of this. There is a fine (that's what Obama's insisted it is ) for not buying it. All policies and insurance companies are impacted. How I the world does one opt out other than moving yo another country?

Re:Furloughed workers

[Dan667]

I'd take the government managing healthcare (and they are doing it fairly well and better than the private sector for Medicaid) than a private health insurance company death panel deciding it is too costly to keep me alive. And that is happening to people today for relatively reasonable cancer and other treatments.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you don't like that then the solution is to just let people who can't afford insurance die, which most would not consider an acceptable solution."

The folks with the money find it perfectly acceptable.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

DOD != all military expenditures, you fucking dunce.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they are. But they're worse in the government, because a business, at least, has to eventually show a profit. A government can simply print more money or borrow to cover the shortfall.

A government, unlike a private interest, cannot take risks that can result in their complete failure. A private industry can. That's a big difference. So is the fact that having to show a "profit" leaches value away from the "customer"-- quarterly reports for a business to show that they are making money for investor/owners creates a short-term view where the true interest is never for the consumer. Burger King isn't in the business of making the best burger it can for the customer-- it's just a means to the TRUE end, which is to make $.

Government can-- and should (for several reasons, including economic ones) LOSE money, because what it does actually IS in the interest of the "consumer" (the citizen). It is serving the interest directly, without a primary profit motive. Moreover, the government is big enough that the way it spends money itself has economic consequences for the entire market, which is important in a way that any sufficiently large private industry would shrug off as unimportant (except insofar as it affects the bottom line).

These are all good things. A for-profit government is a horrible idea, and eliminating government function with all private interests would be a nightmare of biblical proportions-- unfortunately there are many people trying to make this a reality, and even more unfortunately they are succeeding. The results are already destabilizing or destroying the political environment, the world economy, the distribution of income in our society, and many other areas.

By the way, when a government just "print[s] more money", that money is actually borrowed in the form of treasure bills by people and institutions who believe in the stability of the US economy so much that they're willing to put their own money on the line-- it's done to promote economic growth, which has a real, measurable benefit (and has just been tested AGAIN in our country and others). And the money supply can, has been, and will be constricted just as it can, has, and will be expanded to create the reverse effect-- constrain bubbles or overheated economies. The ability to "print" (or contract) the money supply is a blessing the US has as THE go-to currency, and a luxury that many countries do not have (ie, Greece).

And finally, you ask 'do you want these people in charge of your health care? I don't" -- umm, I don't know if you've been following the news, but the government isn't 'in charge' of your health care-- your health care is provided by private insurance companies. The government is simply creating a set of minimum standards and a market where you can buy them.

Would you say the government is "running" the, oh-- I don't know-- the restaurant industry? I wouldn't. You have a bunch of restauraunts out there, and you can choose from any of them. The government has certain requirements for each one-- you have to wash your hands after leaving the bathroom, the food sources are inspected, etc. Service cannot be refused to older customers, and employees can't be fired for their race. You want the government regulating these things. But the restaurants are privately owned and you wouldn't say that the government is running them.

Same thing with health care. It's not a free-for-all any more. There are rules and minimum standards for performance and care. There are protections in place for the consumer, and, because EVERYONE is a customer eventually (and because people can't comparison shop when they have a bullet in their chest), there is a compulsion to pay for the service you choose-- that you will in actual fact be using someday. Everyone pays taxes and everyone is covered by the fire department. Everyone will use the health care system, and everyone should pay for it. It would be cleaner and easier if it were a single-payer system, but b

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

#FoxNewsLogic

Re:Furloughed workers

[microbox]

Add something meaningful. This wasn't because of Republicans. This entire fiasco is Government Bureaucracy screwing things up. It's that same kind of bureaucracy that just needs to go away. You can have regulations without bureaucracy.

From the church of libertarianism: the all-powerful all-wasteful government. I'm sure you never were part of an audit of a government to work out how much waste/cruft there is, and compared the results to, say, a fortune 500. Nah... you just *know* your right.

I'm slightly libertarian myself, but as a true conservative, I respect the fact that I don't know enough about society to architect a solution, and thus favour incremental change. Getting "buraeucracy to go away", as you put it, is the type of arrogant liberal clap-trap you hear when some wide-eyed youth tells you about getting rid of capitalism.

In an unbelievably cynical move, the GOP is actively destroying government, and then complaining that it doesn't work, and "rebels" like yourself buy it. I'll be sitting on the fence until the conservative movement gets its act together, and start, you know, doing something productive.

Chris Christie 2016.

Re:Furloughed workers

[TheGratefulNet]

working people realize how much they're going to have to spend to subsidize all the lower-income and non-workers.

you mean, like retired people, those who were laid off and due to outsourcing, can't find jobs?

how about those that have been going to emergency rooms for treatment since there was no other way for them?

we have always been supporting those that can't support themselves.

but I guess that, to you, its ONLY about those that 'refuse' to support themselves.

go ahead and tell me about 'bootstappiness'. I bet you want to bring that up, don't you?

Re:Furloughed workers

[TheGratefulNet]

(cough) the website guys are NOT 'in charge of your healthcare'.

go back to watching faux news and stop commenting on stuff you have no idea about.

previous system: insurance companies decided if you lived or died. how could that EVER be better than what is currently being implemented?

but anyway, a website is not a doctor. nice distraction attempt, though.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, what "compassionate conservatism" have you seen bashed on this site? Not calling you out here, I just really can't think of a politician pushing compassionate conservatism since Obama got elected, and certainly not on a platform loud enough to have been discussed on /.

Obama and his supporters have been blaming Bush for nearly everything since O was elected. O's sycophants have frequently used /. to echo O's talking points. Furthermore, supporters of limited gov have been bashing Bush on /. ever since Bush started using his particular hyphenated conservative label in the campaign of 2000.

There is no question that Democrat apologists have used the "Republicans do it too" argument routinely as a way of deflecting blame for any criticism of Dem policies or actions. The Tea Party movement has provided a consistent ideological opposition to the big-gov radicals who have run the Dem Party since the late 1960s and the Repub establishment which controls the RP and assists the Dem Party, either directly or through inaction, in accomplishing its ideological goals. Oppressive gov is oppressive gov, no matter who promotes it. There is no voice for limited gov in the DP, but there is a faction advocating limited gov in the RP. Branding the limited gov faction within the RP as hypocritical because of the actions of the Repub establishment is just dishonest.

Re:Furloughed workers

[TheGratefulNet]

If your government cut back to less than a trillion dollars of military spending per year (that might sound like an exaggerated joke number, but it's not..) then you could potentially have lower taxes as well as nice things like national healthcare

100x this.

we have overspent on 'guns and tanks and shit' at the expense of our own local welfare and well-being.

there are those of us who see this; but those who see it are never the ones who control the spending ;(

remove the military. almost entirely! and see what riches we have left to INVEST in our own people and standard of living.

it would spin your head.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing a pretty big chunk there.

"Bush did it so I can too" seems to be a common theme in this administration.

How's that working out for you?

Re:Furloughed workers

[photo pilot]

This fail has many parents. Fail 1 is the total inability of a large part of the USA population to consider ANY of the ways the entire rest of the civilized world runs their healthcare without collapsing into an epileptic fit screaming "OMFG commie pinko socialism death panel grandma waits years for a bandaid end of the word HELP" and then off to find an Ayn Rand poster to whack off to. Fail 2 is the desire of around half of the Board of Directors of this enterprise for this project to fail in the most spectacular way possible. You can't run CAT 6 cable around a building if half your bosses hate ethernet cables and try and cut them every night, let alone roll out something like this. Fail 3 is the usual political apointee level types ignoring all the worker bee feds who no doubht told them about 10,000 times this was going to be a disaster and who also prolly gave the "scum sucking contractor weasels" about 101 change orders and apparently cut their requested load test time by about 90%.

Re:Furloughed workers

[microbox]

Of course they are. But they're worse in the government, because a business, at least, has to eventually show a profit. A government can simply print more money or borrow to cover the shortfall.

Another AC making as if they are an authority on how government work actually gets done. Like you know from experience, and didn't just dream this nonsense up in the cellar of your imagination. Economists do try and understand these issues, and the actual amount of waste in government would surprise anyone who buys into the four-legs-good, government-bad narrative. Of course, those economists are just liberal elitists, and O'Reilly has better ratings anyway.

Once upon a time, conservatives actually had ideas, and listened to professors at universities, and, you know, had a clue about governing. Reagan was like that. He used to, for example, speak to the head of the EPA and ask questions like, "Why is there concern over the water?". Thatcher was the same. She grilled her science advisers, to make sure she herself understood important issues such as global warming. These people had brains. For the GOP, those days are long gone.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want these people in charge of my military either. Or my legislation.

Re: Furloughed workers

[somersault]

Where in the world did yo get the information that the system is "slightly chaotic"?

If you'd read the post I was replying to, you might have understood the context of that statement. He was saying that the system (once it is working) would end up similar to that of the Social Security department - that the system would work overall, but occasionally people would screw up because they're not paying attention.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Culture20]

But it's just as important to realize that as a percentage of GDP revenue is down. Those tax cuts mean the government is taking in a smaller percentage of economic output.

Yes, reduction of revenue per point of GDP is what a tax cut is. Congratulations on discovering a tautology. What matters is whether GDP would be high enough with or without taxes (de)incentivizing growth to make the absolute value of revenue higher or lower. You don't spend "money in relation to GDP", you spend "money".

Re:Furloughed workers

[ocdscouter]

they don't appear to be very good at typing though

They're much better at sharing/retweeting "SCANDALOUS Truth About Obama/Democrats Revealed!!!" videos on their preferred social media platform.

Re:Furloughed workers

[microbox]

If you go by there actions, the modern GOP believes in three things:

(1) Tax cuts for the rich
(2) War, war, and more war
(3) Fundamentalist religion

The rest is just window-dressing that they don't actually believe, but it comes out of their mouths in the hope that you'll vote for them.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

> Simple solution: Just say, "My username is _____, I'm just posting as AC to preserve mod points."

I normally do. And I agree that I made that comment too long, but my frustration with people who think that this is an "either-or" -- EITHER I'm for the government running things, OR I'm for big business -- drives me to distraction sometimes. Being familiar with both, I have no use for either. :)

-- Stephen (smpoole7)

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

oh yeah! well i just edited that page so that is now supports my side of the argument!

Re:Furloughed workers

[Culture20]

The American people paid $88 million for what one can get done via CraigsList at about $50 an hour

1) post personal medical information to Craigslist
2) ???
3) Affordable health insurance!

Re:Furloughed workers

[ocdscouter]

That said, I don't mean to flame Republicans in general. Just the virulently stereotypical ones I'm related to.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I actually registered Republican in '08, though that was to vote for Ron Paul in my first presidential primary. In retrospect, I wasn't nearly as well-informed a voter as I thought I was.)

Re:Furloughed workers

[Dragonslicer]

... while also seizing control of 1/6 of its economy.

If health insurance is 1/6 of the United States' economy, I think we might have bigger problems.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Dragonslicer]

Go-live fiascos like this are quite common in the private sector.

What are you talking about? Every EA game launch has gone absolutely perfectly. They never have any problems on launch day.

Re:Furloughed workers

[microbox]

Do you want Republicans that spend like liberal Democrats,

If you go by history, democrats know how to balance the budget and bring deficits down. Conservatives have their own "economics" that says that tax cuts are free, and then are disconnected from their largess anyway, so the budget gets fscked up.

The problem with the tea party isn't that they want small government, but that they want to cut the parts of the government they don't want, which don't cost much anyway. The three biggest chunks of government are: military, social security, and medicare. Most of the tea-party supports the military largess, and they are on social security and medicare. So reform is a non-starter.

So the real reason people hate the tea party is that they think black-is-white, are will destroy the country to prove it.

Re:Furloughed workers

[StikyPad]

And for hundreds of millions of dollars (do you realize how many programmer hours that buys?!)

One, if you do it right.

Hey, if you can't beat 'em...

Re:Furloughed workers

[xombo]

Correct. It's mostly Medicaid.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Like this?

Since 1980:

Republicans are responsible for $11 of the $16T in debt.
(2+3+6)

Democrats are responsible for $4 of the $16T in debt.
(-1+5)

Just don't use percentages, or you might start crying.

Re:Furloughed workers

[DoofusOfDeath]

I'm aware of that study, and of others, I believe including at least one from the OPM.

Also, the offsets you mentioned support my primary point, which is that it's not necessarily true that every job is more cheaply done by the private sector.

Re:Furloughed workers

[somersault]

I've only read about 5% of the way into that article and it's actually terrifying. Because he's right. He says what a lot of Slashdotters hint at, but he says it very clearly..

Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election?

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

I don't give a shit about republicans vs democrats, because both parties are obviously corrupt, and both are happy to continue infringing on their citizens' privacy, and continue their invasions of the rest of the world..

Fuck that. Really, fuck it. I used to be angry at America, but now I just feel bad for its citizens - a lot of whom will probably end up as refugees if things keep going like this.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Deadstick]

When someone begins a statement with "All I know is..." I consider it within my rights to interpret it literally.

Re:Furloughed workers

[bhlowe]

You can't see how this law will exacerbate outsourcing, downsizing, layoffs and massively increase the federal government? Retirees and the poor have had Medicaid and Medicare and still will... but Obamacare has done nothing to reduce the cost of healthcare such as tort reform to reduce malpractice insurance. And yes, Obamacare will make it that much harder to be an independent worker or small business owner.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

So ... I repeat my wife's question: do you REALLY want these people in charge of your healthcare? I don't.

Last I checked, private companies were still in charge of your healthcare. The government is setting plenty of regulations and is making a website that connects you to the private companies, but decision making is still in the provider's hands (please save any nonsensical, "No, the gov't is really making the decision, you fool!" argument because it's conspiracy-laden crap).

Re:Furloughed workers

[naasking]

Oh really? So, the SEC will fine me for not being invested in a minimum government approved set of funds, that I may or may not need?

The difference is that you may not need funds, but you WILL need healthcare. You will, you just never know when. It's inevitable, unless you're somehow immortal.

Re:Furloughed workers

[sycodon]

Yeah...they'd rather just be moderating trolls.

Re:Furloughed workers

[ABEND]

So ... I repeat my wife's question: do you REALLY want these people in charge of your healthcare? I don't.

Does your wife really think that insurance companies don't make errors with billing, coding or paying the bills?

Next time you're in your doctor's office, ask them how much effort it is to work with the various insurance companies.

Ask them which is worse - the insurance companies or Medicare?

Yes. The insurance company haters should ask their medical providers this question. They will find that medical providers are encouraged to "over treat" patients in order to be reimbursed enough from Medicare to pay for a visit's "paperwork" costs.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Bartles]

Yet, under one method my health insurance is good and affordable. Under the other scenario my insurance costs 259% more and has higher deductibles and out of pocket costs.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure the military is our biggest spending item.

Nope, not even close. Spending on social services ("entitlements" is what it is usually called) is far and away the largest expenditure and was expanding rapidly even before Obamacare which has caused a whole new level of fiscal pain.

Lots of sources show this and those sources who tend to support big gov frequently try to hide the fact that entitlements are the real spending culprit by dividing up the budget pie chart in ways which conceal the true total of all entitlement spending. Defense is about 18-20%. Social spending is something like 50-70%, depending on what you include and, as I mentioned earlier, is rapidly expanding whereas defense spending is not.

Ezra Klein at the WashPo is a pretty reliable Dem loyalist who provides a graph.

As the US population ages, spending on entitlements, if not reformed, will crush the US economically. The welfare state does not work in the long run. Eventually, the money used to buy votes will run out, leading to civil unrest and an authoritarian govt.

Reagan ... Bush ... But somehow Democrats are the tax & spend party.

The DP has been using tax dollars to buy votes for nearly a century. Everyone knows this. It is not a secret. DP media partisans throw a tantrum every time a pol or pundit mentions it.

If you want to play the partisan blame game, a chart from Jon Gabriel at Ricochet.com ( a Repub establishment mouthpiece site) is helpful. The chart actually makes Clinton look good because it doesn't provide the context, which is that the deficit increase under Clinton was slowed by the Repubs gaining control over Congress under Gringrich. It also ignores the fact that Reagan had to deal with a Dem congress which kept jacking up domestic spending as the cost of supporting Reagan's main priority which was winning the Cold War.

Do I really need to mention that spending on national defense is actually constitutional while spending on entitlements is not?

Re:Furloughed workers

[Bartles]

I currently can afford health insurance that I buy individually. When my policy premium goes up 259% next year I won't be able to afford it.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Metrol]

but you WILL need healthcare

Yes. And I will need food and water, as well as shelter and clothing. In fact, those things are a far higher priority in my day to day survival than health care.

Is it now the job of the government to provide all things deemed essential?

Re:Furloughed workers

[Bartles]

That's a silly table. They just added in government departments, (like NASA and the State Department) until they could get the number over a trillion. After you find the link with google, it's imp;ortnat to process the information.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

(cough) the website guys are NOT 'in charge of your healthcare'.

CGI, the 'website guys', are not in charge on anyone's healthcare. The Department of Health and Human Services, who designed, managed, and oversaw the entire website and exchange project, is in charge of writing the regulations that determine what health care I'm allowed get, and what I'll pay for it.

So, yes, the guys that run the website program ARE the same guys that are determining what health care you are allowed to recieve.

Re:Furloughed workers

[tlhIngan]

Go-live fiascos like this are quite common in the private sector.

Some are quite spectacular - go back a few years and see Apple's iPhone 3G launch where the vast majority of purchases could not use their phones because Apple's activation servers melted down from the immense load. (And it's not like Apple doesn't have the numbers of how many iPhone 3Gs they made...).

Or it seems any big video game launch because the DRM servers melted down...

This fail has many parents. Fail 1 is the total inability of a large part of the USA population to consider ANY of the ways the entire rest of the civilized world runs their healthcare without collapsing into an epileptic fit screaming "OMFG commie pinko socialism death panel grandma waits years for a bandaid end of the word HELP" and then off to find an Ayn Rand poster to whack off to.

There's even a DDoS tool created to take down HealthCare.gov by simply reloading the page over and over and over again...

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

If you go by history, democrats know how to balance the budget and bring deficits down.

If you said, "Democrats know how to raise taxes and bring deficits down", at least you'd be 50% correct.

Re:Furloughed workers

[mrchaotica]

They are required to award contracts to the lowest qualified bidder. It's the qualification process that's the problem...

Re:Furloughed workers

[somersault]

Even without those two, the figure is still well over a trillion. I wasn't actually implying that you should stop at getting it to a trillion either, I was just pointing out how ludicrous the current number is. Can you justify the amount of resources being plowed into your military? No country that would like to invade or destroy the US can actually afford to do so. More civilised countries have no reason to even consider attacking (yet). It's actually kind of scary how powerful and pervasive your military is, considering the blatant corruption and power hungry nature of your leadership. I just hope your servicemen and citizens have the balls to stand up against it if things start getting a bit too Third Reich. Or the whole world is fucked.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I really need to mention that spending on national defense is actually constitutional while spending on entitlements is not?

What idiocy.

Are the laws that created the entitlements unconstitutional? No.
Then spending on them is constitutional. It's just not directly in the constitution. There's a difference. One you seem to purposely miss.

But I'm sure all your other points are JUST as valid.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Happened to me.

In 1981 I received SSI benefits because my father was disabled.
In 2012 I received a letter from the Social Security Administration saying they had overpaid me in 1981 and I owed them money.
After over 30 years!
I sent letter after letter, with the appropriate appeal form. They ignored all of them.
Just kept sending increasingly threatening letters. By the way, they were sending the letters to an address I ahve not lived at for over 30 years. Even though they have my current address.
I called, they could not help. Eventually someone was able to change the address.
They then sent a wage garnishment to my employer.
I called, reached a person who said 'fine, we'll reverse this'. But they didn't actually tell anyone.
So my employer deducted it from my wages. How embarrassing is that? They said I had to work it out with SSA.
And after that, the IRS deducted it from my tax refund. They too said I had to work it out with SSA.
Then I get a letter from the SSA saying 'we have recalculated your benefits and we owe you money'.
They sent me a check for over double what the had garnished from me.

No doubt i will get another letter in the future telling me I owe them money

The only difference that private insurance would make in this situation is that it wouldn't have taken 30 years to get you in court or threaten you with collection letters. Private insurance companies are very fast to recover their money. Private insurance companies are not more compassionate than the government. Private insurance companies' only concern is for their profit.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you know have the AMA not create an artificial limit on the number of doctors available to keep rates high. Nope its the fact that crappy doctors can be sued that is making health care costs high, or the fact that the insurance industry is barely capable of doing their jobs.

Re:Furloughed workers

[GodfatherofSoul]

Horseshit. The "website" is not a website. It gets really annoying listening to the uninitiated thinking they could churn out that system during their summer break. It's not a just a website. You've got all kinds of underlying systems like account validation, the interfaces with health insurers, the call center (which is a solid 'A' since I've had to call them about 3-4 times), etc. And, there was probably only a year and a half to build it. That doesn't excuse the massive problems, but don't think you're going to hire some javascript guru to roll it out on his lunch break.

Re:Furloughed workers

[mcgrew]

we are borrowing money to pay for tax cuts to the rich.

Correct.

we are borrowing money to pay for social security/medicare.

Incorrect. Social Security/Medicare is paid for by payroll taxes. The government has borrowed from SS/M to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

we are borrowing money to pay for farm subsidies.

No, you got it right the first time. If people like Romney paid the same percentage of their income in taxes I do we would not have a deficit.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Spending on social services ("entitlements" is what it is usually called) is far and away the largest expenditure and was expanding rapidly even before Obamacare which has caused a whole new level of fiscal pain.

Fine.

Use all the Social Security money to pay off the debt. Stop collecting it & paying it out.

See if any Republicans mind.

But I'm sure it's all the Democrats fault, somehow.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

wrong.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_budget_pie_chart

Re:Furloughed workers

[nbauman]

Yet, under one method my health insurance is good and affordable. Under the other scenario my insurance costs 259% more and has higher deductibles and out of pocket costs.

The fact-checkers have been having a field day playing "gotcha" with the Fox News interviews with people claiming that their insurance will cost more under Obamacare. All they have to do is call the people up and ask them to describe their policy.

There were cheaper policies that didn't cover as much -- they had higher deductibles and out of pocket costs. People would find out, too late, that they had a $20,000 bill that their insurance didn't cover. Those policies won't qualify under Obamacare.

The Obamacare policies will cost more than some of the old policies. But they have lower out of pocket costs than the old policies.

People say, "I like my policy." That's a mistake. You don't know whether that policy is any good until you've gotten some big medical expenses, and you can see what it covers. And most people don't get big medical expenses very often.

Re:Furloughed workers

[nbauman]

My wife works for the federal government (Social Security Admin). Not surprisingly, many of the folks there are big Obamacare supporters. All she has to do to "convert" them on the fly is ask, "put it to you this way: you've seen how things work here. Do you really want the same people deciding whether or not your mother can have surgery?" That gets them every time.

What's the alternative? Do you want these people deciding whether or not your mother can have surgery? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Nataline_Sarkisyan

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that tort reform is a massive red herring - here's one link of the many that google shows : http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/center-progressive-reform-tort-reform-wont-provide-significant-healthcare-savings

Also, decent healthcare available from someone other than your employer makes it easier rather than harder to be an independent worker or small business owner.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait until it starts working and healthy working people realize how much they're going to have to spend to subsidize all the lower-income and non-workers.

Uh, realize this first - before this they were ALREADY subsidized. Just in stupidly inefficient and terrible ways.

They go to ER and wait till they are sick enough for ER to treat them. Guess who pays[1] for that? Not them, they don't have money. Guess how expensive that is compared to treating them earlier at a GP or not at ER stage at least?

Or they commit a crime to go to prison and get healthcare treatment or just to get food and shelter. Yes people actually do that. Go google it.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/02/on-purposely-getting-arrested-to-get-life-saving-surgery/273282/
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/nc-man-allegedly-robs-bank-health-care-jail/story?id=13887040
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/27/timothy-alsip-robs-bank-healthcare_n_3825492.html
Think about how expensive that is - getting the bank, cops, courts, prisons, hospitals and who knows who else involved.

Whether you like it or not if you pay taxes or insurance premiums you have already been paying for it. It's just been done in a very very inefficient and stupid way. Unless you wish to do mass euthanizations you are going to have to pay for it one way or another.

This "Frankenstein Monster" of Obamacare is not that efficient either but you can thank stupid selfish citizens like you and equally self-serving politicians for that who give voters like you what they want (which given rather polarized and conflicting wants creates mutated monsters like ObamaCare).

Careful - maybe one day 3rd world people like me who are smarter and cheaper than you will take YOUR jobs. Then you may realize you might need those subsidies after all. Or maybe you're one of the rich elites who don't have to worry about such "small problems".

The sad thing is the corrupt greedy politicians in my 3rd world country are trying to make our healthcare crappier- they've siphoned out billions of money so have to make up by cutting out stuff elsewhere.

[1] if you ever need ER treatment you also pay in ERs being less efficient, or even being closed down because of $$$. Google for: ERs closed down.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

With a $10,000 deductible, the "more coverage" part is bullshit.

Re:Furloughed workers

[naasking]

Is it now the job of the government to provide all things deemed essential?

The government isn't providing healthcare, the government created a regulated market for healthcare, just like it regulates the food market.

Re:Furloughed workers

[nbauman]

Nobody is going to pay more than 5% of his income for health insurance. What's your problem?

There's also the question of how much your old policy would have paid when you got a big bill. A lot of those old policies had maximum payouts, high deductibles, and all kinds of exclusions. Somebody would go to a hospital and come home with $30,000 in bills that weren't paid by the insurance. Under Obamacare, the maximum out of pocket will be $8,500 for an individual.

Obamacare is actually Romneycare, which is a bad health plan. A single payer system would have been better. The Canadians pay half as much as we do. But Obama wouldn't stand up to the Republicans, so a Republican plan is what we got. It's better than what we had before.

Re:Furloughed workers

[DoofusOfDeath]

But for a federal government fail, the alternative is to, what, move to Canada?

Well, actually, Germany for me. I looked around, decided it was much better run, and decided to do what it will take to work and live there. I'll send you a postcard. Assuming the U.S. postal service is still functioning.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

If only we had single-payer, then oh those independent workers and small business owners would be just fine.

But no, tort reform hasn't helped in the dozens of places that has tried it, such as Texas, Florida, or shoot, I forget the third state that tried it and failed.

Sorry, but it's a myth that massive malpractice payments are causing a problem.

OTOH, the number of medical bankruptcies is real and documented.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

I sacrificed a mod point for you, then posted anonymously. If you still show as +1 after this, it's either changed or has always been that posting AC will not undo mods. Note that I do not get a warning about posting to a thread that I've modded in so long as the Post Anonymously checkbox is checked.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm certainly glad **you're** here to tell me what I like or need in an insurance policy. As a male I, for one, appreciate supplementing birth control and look forward to the day I can activate my maternity care.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Penguinisto]

There were cheaper policies that didn't cover as much

Because, you know, enforced coverage of birth control supplies, pre-natal care and other maternity care will really come in handy for me and my wife (whose hysterectomy occurred in 2010...) But you know - no worries in being forced by IRS edict to pay for a massive increase in insurance premiums for coverage I literally do not need - all because some policy wonk thinks he knows better than I do about what I do and do not need for healthcare coverage.

Re:Furloughed workers

[nbauman]

Next time you're in your doctor's office, ask them how much effort it is to work with the various insurance companies. Should you be in a hospital, ask the doctor how much time is lost in disputing the necessity of treatment with insurance companies, or how many patients opt for less than optimal treatment because an insurance company bureaucrat interprets a rule differently from other staff at the very same firm.

I used to interview doctors and medical office managers about their office management and billing. One office manager told me that they had 6 full-time equivalent staff, and of those 6, 1 full-time equivalent person was working on the insurance billing. I heard that a lot -- about 1/6 or 15% of their staff time is spent on billing.

That is, you have a medical office staffer talking on the phone to an insurance company staffer, trying to figure out a bill. They're both getting paid for that time. And you're paying them.

I figured it out like this: For every $1.00 you pay the insurance company, the insurance company takes 20 cents for administrative costs, and passes the remaining 80 cents on to the doctor. The doctor's office spends 15 cents of that on administrative costs, and uses the remaining 65 cents on actually delivering health care.

In contrast, Medicare spends about 3 cents out of every $1.00 on administrative costs, and doctors told me that the cost and hassle of processing Medicare was much lower. That's why most doctors accept Medicare, even though it pays less.

65 cents sounds about right. The Canadian health care system spends about 65 cents to our dollar for the same outcomes.

Re:Furloughed workers

[nbauman]

Like Nataline Sarkisyan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Nataline_Sarkisyan

Michael Moore wouldn't be able to make those movies if the insurance companies didn't make it so easy for him.

Re:Furloughed workers

[fightinfilipino]

"Tort Reform" is a red herring foisted by insurance companies. reducing the ability for patients to protect themselves when medical practitioners screw up does nothing to reduce costs and does everything to undercut the little guy.

healthcare costs so much in the U.S. because primary and preventative care are lacking, and the "market" has emphasized high-cost hospital care and pharmaceuticals. in short, capitalistic greed is unchecked. sad, but unsurprising, really.

government is needed to step in and counter this trend. left to their own devices, the healthcare industry and pharmaceutical companies will just continue to jack up prices, while our population does little to increase overall health.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not have heard of SNAP, FEMA, the FDA, the EPA, the FHA, and more. Heck, my city's charter still includes a mandate for providing housing for the poor But this is about you paying for it, in advance, or if you're not able to pay, then it's covered by the government. And FWIW, I'm paying a tax based on a mandate imposed by the federal government in order to pay for water to be cleaned. It is a federal issue, BTW, since downstream of us is another state, and they were complaining about the water they were receiving.

So yeah, the government is making me pay for food, water, and I do have to keep my house up to certain standards, and I'm pretty sure I have to wear clothing too.

Damn gov't, I want my freedom!

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a stint working as a student employee in the network group of a major public university. They were experimenting to see if students would do a better job than contractors for things like replacing hardware. From my perspective, we could have done much better. We cause multiple network outages from carelessness and incompetence (ie knocking out power cords, leaving off the vlans for a switch uplink) yet we still performed at least on par with the contractors for significantly less money.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

but you WILL need healthcare

Yes. And I will need food and water, as well as shelter and clothing. In fact, those things are a far higher priority in my day to day survival than health care.

Is it now the job of the government to provide all things deemed essential?

Actually, yes. The point of having a government is to provide stability to society. Taking care of those who are unable to take care of themselves is pretty much the point. For example, disparate individuals will find it difficult to defend the nation against other nations, so we give that job to the government. As well as enforcing regulation on water quality, building codes, the FDA, food stamps... and health care. Civil society also helps address these problems, but not on the level that a government can.

So no, if you can provide something for yourself, you should do that. If you found yourself in a situation where you were suddenly unable to provide those things for yourself, I doubt you'd be complaining that you received food stamps.

I'll bet you're that guy/girl that rolls his eyes when a coworker says they spent their weekend working for Habitat for Humanity.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

This wasn't because of Republicans.

The shutdown most certainly was. You are free to delude yourself if necessary to prop up your ideology, but don't let that nonsense leak into the real world please.

Re:Furloughed workers

[HungWeiLo]

Same here. The bills bouncing between doctor, hospital, insurance company, lab, x-ray technician, OBGYN are just comical.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

And it just might be even more complicated than both of you think. Yes, the insurance company is a private corporation, but it is following book loads of rules promulgated by the Federal Government. Yes, for all practical purposes, the Government is in charge of your healthcare.

So. the Government isn't in charge of your healthcare, but because you say so, they are?

Now, I understand that the laws and regulations could use paring down, but your argument is analogous to "because of the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the Federal Government, for all practical purposes is in charge of your hot dogs". As in, the Feds just set the standards.

Yes, the ACA made it harder for the insurance companies to do some things, like drop you for pre existing conditions, but the insurance companies recieved lots of carrots for that particular stick. The big failing of the ACA, IMHO, is that it did not come down hard enough on the insurance companies - they are the big winners in all of this.

Now, this I fully agree with. The ACA is basically another set of bureaucratic rules on top of a huge fucking pile of bureaucratic rules (which were lobbied for and written for insurance companies). It's like staining a deck, if the wood is rotting, it's already too late.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem will be if a small number of people now have affordable health care VS a majority that have to pay more and don't use it. Those are the ones that will flip out and start voting for the law to be changed/repealed. It all comes down to the numbers. Most thought they would benefit OR would not have to pay much more to that the few could get in on the insurance.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Mullen]

Me Me Me Me!!!!!

How about this, a minimal floor of insurance quality is set that requires all insurance policies to cover birth control supplies, pre-natal care and other maternity care so that when it is need by the policy holder, they have access to it. With this policy, women can get access to birth control to have children they are ready to and when those children are born, they are born healthier and much less likely to become a tax burden and more likely to become a tax contributor. Which in the long run, lowers all of our taxes and health costs, even for narrow minded Tea Party dweebs. Also, that would just make us a good First World Country and not a central African shit-hole.

Call me a socialist, but making sure someone I don't know has a healthy kid that is not a burden to state, gets educated and thus less likely to pull out a gun and shoot me over $20 is in my best interest.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Mr D from 63]

Ha! That is perfectly withing your rights!

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes two to tango, and the Democrats were saying no to Republican proposals with equal vigor.

The childlike games played just to prevent spending cuts is embarrassing and shameful.

But it only takes one Republican (Bohner) to hold the music hostage until someone sucks his dick.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

> So, the SEC will fine me for not being invested in a minimum government approved set of funds, that I may or may not need?

Yes they will. Responsible people recognize the importance and need for punishing investors that do not have enough money set aside. You can go to prison in the US for attempting to invest when you don't have enough money before investing. The poor are not allowed to make most investments other than publicly traded stocks or mutual funds. You must be an accredited investor for most other types:

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

If you are not rich, then the US does not allow you to become rich. The law prevents you from investing if don't already have money. The Democrats in that country have long recognized that it is better to not allow workers to become rich than it is to allow them to risk what little they have. It's better to have equal outcome than unequal outcomes where some win big from gambling and some lose big.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

It is really pathetic that there are still mental midgets that don't recognize the value of the US military. After all of his anti-military, anti-war-on-terror rhetoric, even Obama realized that we need the military a few months into his first term when a terrorist cell tried to kill him at the G8 summit in Europe. Without the US military, all of your basic human needs are in jeopardy and most of the world, including the US would probably be speaking Mandarin in under 25 years... One of the reasons we spend so much on our military is because the rest of the world is incapable (poor nations) or too incompetent (much of Europe) to protect themselves from the next Hitler or Stalin. There is real evil in this world and it wants to kill you, take everything you have and rape your wives and daughters and enslave your sons. If you don't believe me, your history education was sorely lacking. The products of public education and alphabet soup media have been long taught what to think instead of how to think to the point that all they can do is regurgitate the pap they have been fed since kindergarten. Develop your critical thinking skills and join the adults and the big table.

Re:Furloughed workers

[tibman]

I'm sure your SO feels the same way about your Viagra.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

The current majority of military spending (the wars) are not a part of the budget. As a result, the military portion of the budget can remain small, while military spending is huge.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

The history of Rome shows us that #2 *can* be good for the economy under certain circumstances.
1) It must be a short and victorious war.
2) It must be a war of conquest.
3) You must be willing to loot the conquered lands of their wealth.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

using your logic, every aspect of the US economy, except for black markets, are following book loads of rules promulgated by the Federal Government...

and yes the Insurance companies got a huge win from the ACA because the resistance to Single Payer or a truely socialized medical system would never have passed through our Congress at this time. The ACA is so complicated because of the fact it attempted to preserve as much of the existing system as possible while still providing the opportunity for the uninsured to buy insurance.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Penguinisto]

Me Me Me Me!!!!!

If you want to force me to pay for someone else, then sack-up and raise my taxes for that purpose - Medicare/Medicaid already exist for this exact function. Don't hide it behind "healthcare" and then systematically damage everyone's quality of healthcare in the process (which this little law will indeed do...)

Otherwise, your first sentence shows an idiotic, greedy, and rapacious attitude towards things that are quite simply not yours.

How about this, a minimal floor of insurance quality is set that requires all insurance policies to cover birth control supplies, pre-natal care and other maternity care so that when it is need by the policy holder, they have access to it.

The second two are, believe it or not, already within the grasp of Medicaid, or can be with a simple modification of that statute. Given this, why do you feel the need to screw over everyone with a massive IRS-enforced boondoggle just to accomplish what could have been done for far easier. It's like requiring everyone to buy a full-blown Oracle RAC cluster and banning MySQL entirely, even when a MySQL install could do everything that most folks actually need.

The birth control thing? Why in the ever-living *fuck* should I be required to pay for something others allegedly need, but can be equally attained at no cost by simply keeping one's legs together?

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, large organizations, private and public are prone to this. But Government organizations are 'more' prone to it because for much of what they do,they do not have to pay for in terms of repercussions - financial or otherwise.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Bartles]

Stop telling me my good insurance is bad. It is better than anything I can get on the exchange. I'm sick and tired of ACA supporters living in denial of the fact that this law is hurting a lot of people.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Bartles]

I don't need a fact checker or foxnews to tell me that this law destroyed my ability to get quality affordable healthcare. Wake up, idiot, and listen to what people directly affected by this law are saying rather than the people that are telling you how to think.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

and 3 years of implementation funds being denied by Republicans in Congress, 3 years of the House voting repeatedly to repeal the law, 2 years of Republican Attorney Generals suing the Federal Government to stop the law all the way to the Supreme Court, and finally the 2012 election where ~47% of the population including most Republican State Governors and Legislatures where absolutely convinced Romney was going to trounce Obama and you guessed it, repeal the law on day one.

Now back to your comment about the furlough, the issue was tech and helpdesk employees being furloughed just as the site launched.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that you've gone off into left field, complaining about people having the gall to blame the Bush administration for policies put into place *during* the Bush administration, how about addressing the question you quoted? (I'll include it below for reference.)

"...what "compassionate conservatism" have you seen bashed on this site?"

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that they don't want to limit the federal government, they want to limit certain parts of it that they don't agree with. They would rather cut 10billion from education and supporting the homeless than cut even a billion from military spending. Why are they still advocating tax credits to oil companies as well?

When budgets are tight you have to be careful what you cut back on. Removing fruits from the food budget probably saves a lot of money but it has other consequences that you will pay for dearly later on top of being irreversible.

Ask yourself, in the 80s child hunger in the U.S. was largely handled, children did not have to starve. Here we are 30 years later and child hunger is back and in force, do you think a hungry child is going to become a productive member of society or do you think that the child is likely to find other ways to meet his or her basic needs? Surprise, there's more crime, then surprise there is a shortage of skilled workers! It's a deadly spiral that we pulled ourselves out of towards the end of the 1970s, then Reagan and Bush dismantled those programs while funding star wars defense tactics that everyone knew would never be viable. Why?

Of course you can compare that against the Democrats under Clinton with the DMCA law, same problem really, too much money in politics.

Why someone would opt to cut money from feeding children while adding money to the already bloated defense industry is beyond me. On a personal level I would have trouble sleeping making a decision like that.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's part of how you bring deficits down.

If you're *already* spending more than you bring in, you have a deficit. You can't solve that just by bringing in *less* money. Do that, and your deficit gets bigger, not smaller.

We've had *one* President in the past few decades that has actually put anything into place that reduced our deficit, and *might* have reduced our debt. The guy who replaced him killed that plan, by encouraging Congress to reduce taxes, increase spending, and then started a couple wars 'off' the budget. Wars with no clear goals, and no plan on how to extract ourselves from said wars even if we *did* somehow decide we had completed those undefined goals.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Bartles]

Judging by the way things are going with the NSA, IRS, ACA, and NM anal cavity searches, the next Hitler or Stalin is us.

Re:Furloughed workers

[sumdumass]

Please explain this logic a little better for me. I am particulsrly stuck on the connection between already paying or already subsidizing the uninsure and the massive increases in costs because we are sybsidizing people who don't have insurance.

It seems to me that x+1 would be the same as 1+x and U*P is the same as P*U. That is after all what you are saying with the already subsidizing line. And this isn't even getting to the logic of spreading those subsidies out over more people should reduce the cost to any one person when it is spread between more people. It is as if thr average of 2+2 is now 6 or something.

So yes, i need some explaination to why basic math fails that line of reasoning. If we are already subdidising then, then subsidising them should be about the same.

Re:Furloughed workers

[operagost]

So your stance is the same as the President's: "I know I lied. I had to, so I could be reelected. You are too stupid to make your own health decisions."

Lots of people lost the insurance that was helping them treat their preexisting conditions, like cancer. The cancer treatment was what was important to them. They needed to stay alive this year, because it won't matter if they get free Crestor for their high LDL if they're dead from bladder cancer next week. It won't matter if they have pre and post-natal coverage if they're past menopause. This is what they're being forced to pay for, because some politicians decided "one size fits all, I know better that you proles" was perfectly reasonable.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that you're claiming a law that just barely went into affect hasn't had results of lowering costs yet....weird. It's like saying that seatbelt laws didn't lower yearly death rates the day after they went into affect. I live in Massachusetts. It will not make it harder to be an independent worker, it's already required here. Maybe now people will just have to actually pay living wages to their employees on things that can't be outsourced. Weird you'd be against paying for something everyone is going to need.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, in the lead-up to the shutdown the Republicans even changed House procedures to prevent the Senate-passed version of the budget from being voted on. Normally, *any* representative could call for a vote on a bill which had been passed by the Senate. The Republicans changed that rule so that *only* the House Majority Leader, or his designated representative could do so.

Anybody who claims that the Democrats had a hand in the government shutdown is either woefully uninformed, or utterly incapable of recognizing intentional sabotage when it's right in front of their faces.

Here's the normal process for a budget:
1) The President proposes a budget.
2) The House reviews it, and builds an actual budget bill for a vote.
3) The House votes on the budget bill. If it passes go to 4; otherwise go to 2.
4) The Senate reviews the house-passed budget bill, and makes any revisions they deem proper.
5) The Senate votes on their budget bill.
6) If the bill does not pass, go to 5; if it passes unchanged from the House version, go to 8; else go to 7.
7) The Senate sends their passed budget bill back to the House for reconciliation. Go to 3.
8) The Senate sends the bill to the President for his signature.
9) If the President vetoes the bill, go to 2; else go to 10.
10) We have a budget!

The procedure changes the Republicans made killed the process at #7, preventing a vote on the Senate-revised budget bill even though there were enough votes to actually pass the blasted thing. Instead, we (once again) ended up with a 'continuing resolution' instead of a budget, and it took Republicans suffering the public opinion backlash of a Republican-forced government shut-down to even get that.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally someone on ./ who actually seems to have had a real job in the real world and understands complicated things are complicated.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but the government sure as hell regulates those things to make sure that they provide a minimum level of safety because private companies with no legal motive other than profit sure as hell don't care about their captive consumers. If you want to see what "deregulation" does look at cable or mobile phones, massive conglomerates with no competition and no reason to improve. The private market failed horribly and the government once again has to clean up after the mess that they've left behind.

Re:Furloughed workers

[operagost]

Cool story, bro.

If those incidents were really very common, don't you think Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama would be gleefully listing them off every day? News flash: there are bad, greedy people out there. Some work for insurance companies. And some work for the government.

Re:Furloughed workers

[coolmoose25]

Okay... I've had it with the "you should spend less money on the military" as the answer to the US problems, while talking about how we spend too much and tax too little... Let me guess. You're from Europe?

It takes a lot of hutzpah to say something like that when you've lived and slept under the blanket of security the US has provided to you for decades. Yes, perhaps we SHOULD spend less on the military - lets start by closing all US bases in Europe. Europeans are so much smarter than us, why would the US need bases there? After over 60 years since the end of WWII, can't Europe take care of itself?

Well, maybe not, considering the fact that you let the Balkans burn down while hurrumphing that "someone" should do something. It took Bill Clinton to bomb them into peace. And that was in your own back yard.

Again, I think you're right and have a point. Lets NOT deploy a missile shield in Europe. The Russians will be happy. And when Iran finally gets its nuke and can lob it in to Geneva... well no great loss, right?

We can learn from your outstanding economic wisdom. It's not like there are any problems with government spending in Europe... right? Oh, hold on... is Greece and France still in Europe, or is it just the Germans now?

So we are agreed... The US should go home. We'll let you all handle that whole IslamoFacism thing... and you can make sure China doesn't take over the world... and Putin will sell you all the gas you need... no worries there. Have fun... if you need us, just send an email to US@wedontgiveafrackanyore.com. We'll get back to you real soon.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

My mom recently had her annual physical. For some reason never adequately explained, the doctor checked off every single blood test available on the lab form, to the tune of over $1000. of course, her health insurance for work kicked it back. The doctor's office assured my mom it would be no problem, they'd just bill it to medicare.

Tell me again how terrible Medicate is for doctors.

Re:Furloughed workers

[I'm New Around Here]

I knew it was you. ;^)

Re:Furloughed workers

[I'm New Around Here]

My mistake. I should have included Medicaid in that question.

As to the AC, the end goal of Obamacare is single payer, which will be "Medicare/Medicaid for all". So the situation is still relevant.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Your charts show a definite revenue problem.

A rough rolling average (to flatten out the highs and troughs) shows flattish revenues over the last decade and a half. That is a terrible revenue picture, because flat in absolute dollars means we are sunk unless we take an axe to spending, oh, starting back in circa 2000.

Obviously we need to get both our revenues and spending back near the long term trends we were seeing at the close of the 20th century. It looks like the tax cuts you love put us on a decsively lower revenue trend.

As a percentage of GDP, we are below the long term average, even if we focus our eyes on the last three decades. So there is room to raise taxes. No, that will not solve the whole problem. But no good will come from pretending we do not have a revenue problem, when we do.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Magius_AR]

Incorrect. Social Security/Medicare is paid for by payroll taxes. The government has borrowed from SS/M to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

You are wrong. There are insufficient payroll tax inlays to cover the current (and future) cost of SS/Medicare. They have borrowed from the general fund to supplement the lack of funds from payroll. This is especially true during Obama's "payroll tax holiday stimulus". You lamebrains continue to treat a 12% tax on income as if it's some phantom non-existant expense rather than the major drain on our incomes that it is -- simply because it's apportioned. No wonder you think the programs are "free".

If people like Romney paid the same percentage of their income in taxes I do we would not have a deficit.

You could take all the income of the top .1% and you wouldn't address the deficit we have. We have a huge spending problem.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. My boss retroactively changed our company's insurance plan from one company to another a few years ago to save a few bucks. I'd already had my monthly MS meds shipped out on A's dime at the beginning of the month, at the end I received a bill from A NET-30 from the day my meds were shipped. No they would not wait for me to get my card from B so I could forward the claim to them. No they would not bill B. They would, however, happily add a 5% service charge if I waited to my next paycheck to pay them.

Fortunately since I was diagnosed, I've maintained a savings account to cover 6 months worth of meds, otherwise losing an entire paycheck would have been more than an irritation. Now if only the economy would stop falling into every gutter it can find so I can get rich, retire while I can still walk and enjoy it, then kill myself before I start shitting and drooling in public.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

My girlfiriend is in the same boat, what costs 180/month now, will be at least 259 next year, if she's willing to lower the (shitty) coverage she has now.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Magius_AR]

But it's just as important to realize that as a percentage of GDP revenue is down. Those tax cuts mean the government is taking in a smaller percentage of economic output. So when inflation drives up the cost of guns/tanks/healthcare/office space/contractors for the government there isn't a corresponding increase in revenue to off set it, because we've chosen to end taxes on a number of things that get inflated (like the wealthiest 1%'s salaries).

GDP is irrelevant. Use inflation-adjusted dollars for both revenue and spending and compare. I covered it here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4382673&cid=45267501

In summary, in inflation adjusted dollars over the course of a decade, revenue is at +10-30% and spending is at +50%. My best guess is that this chart being off is that is probably tries to focus on income tax revenue, ignoring all other inlays. But it is wrong.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Bartles]

For me it's 165$ to 451$, and the coverage is slightly worse.

Re:Furloughed workers

[nbauman]

The reason they cover contraception and maternity is because it's cheaper for the insurance company (and for you) to have a simple policy that covers everything than it is to write a policy customized exactly to your needs.

Suppose you could get a policy for you and your wife for $20,000 a year. Then you told the insurance company, "Wait, my wife had a hysterectomy, we don't need contraception and maternity benefits. how much will you charge me for a policy that's identical except it doesn't have contraception and maternity benefits?" They might tell you, "$19,900 a year." Or more likely, they'd tell you, "$20,000 a year." In other words, it would cost them just about as much (or more) to write a custom policy for you as it would to issue you a standard policy.

That's because, if they issue custom policies, they'd have to hire an army of clerks to make sure you were billing them for the right expenses and they were paying the right amount.

Medicare is a simple policy. You turn 65, you're eligible, and everybody pays the same premium. It covers all major conditions. You get sick, they pay your doctor 80% of their negotiated price, you pay the rest. The administrative costs of Medicare are about 3% of revenues.

Private insurance has more options. The administrative costs of private insurance are about 40% of revenues.

A la carte health care plans were fashionable in big corporations a few years ago, but they didn't save any money so they don't do it any more. They failed in the marketplace.

Re:Furloughed workers

[TemporalBeing]

Pretty sure the military is our biggest spending item. Especially over the last 30 years that has seen our debt go from $1T to $16T.

Ironically, every Republican president since 1980 has at least doubled the national debt.

Reagan - from $1T to $3T Bush Sr - from $3T to $6T Bush Jr - from $5T to $11T

But somehow Democrats are the tax & spend party. Which is actually fiscally responsible from a government point of view.

Sources please. From what I am aware, Obama entered office with around $8T in debt, not $11T. Even so, don't look at the timeline (1980 to 2008) or the amounts. You also conveniently skipped Clinton who had a full Republican congress nearly his entire 8 years in office.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Unordained]

I'm so sorry that, at some point (Reagan,) we made the decision that humans should be taken care of, no matter what. We're not animals, after all. It's a dog-eat-dog world, but for %^@* sake, let's compete for wealth and such, not for basic survival. We mandated that hospitals treat any and all, and then they spread the costs around.

When we did so, and discovered that people in fact aren't all self-reliant future-predicting money-saving accident-preventing weather-controlling disease-resistant beings, and that we were having to cover costs at a later stage and greater expense than really necessary, yeah. We decided to push back a little, and ask people to contribute up-front to their statistically likely healthcare costs, for which we're all (one way or another) on the hook for.

This is, if anything, more of a personal-responsibility push than before, which I would have expected conservatives to favor. We have a safety net (you'll get healthcare no matter what) but by golly, we're tired of moochers. If you can pay, then pay. There are some things you can control about your health -- but there are an awful lot you can't, and for you to claim you know you won't need certain care is fairly ridiculous. Cancer? Car accident? Plague outbreak? You don't have enough data, nor enough of an immediate feedback loop, to plan properly for those eventualities. And unless you're willing to be left to rot and die on the side of the road, I don't accept your claim of self-reliance. It's all fine and good until bad shit happens.

Sure, your policy covers some gender-based services you clearly won't use, for the sake of simplicity, so we can compare plans and make informed decisions. The actual cost to you of having insurance coverage for services you know you won't need is really quite low, because it's spread across everyone, and you're getting benefits that others won't use. This isn't a savings plan, you're not paying into a silo, it's insurance. Same thing with paying taxes to pay, in general, for care for the poor. It's not a silo, it's an insurance plan for all citizens, even you, in the eventuality that your best-laid-plans fail and you wind up on the street.

You're not paying for services you won't need, you're paying to be part of an insurance pool with thousands of other people who will all have different issues, and you're all sharing the cost. It's different.

Re:Furloughed workers

[nbauman]

Me Me Me Me!!!!!

If you want to force me to pay for someone else, then sack-up and raise my taxes for that purpose - Medicare/Medicaid already exist for this exact function. Don't hide it behind "healthcare" and then systematically damage everyone's quality of healthcare in the process (which this little law will indeed do...)

Obama didn't sack-up and raise taxes for health care because, after extensive discussions with the Republicans, he concluded that the Republicans would never agree to it. He therefore had to lie and call it something else. The alternative was even worse http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1312793 In state after state, Republican legislatures won't pay taxes for Medicaid, and the conservative Democrats aren't much better. What do you think "Taxed Enough Already" means?

A lot of liberal Democrats thought that if Obama stood up and fought the Republicans, he could have gotten a single-payer system like Canada. Too bad. The Canadian system costs about half as much for about the same outcomes. So you're going to have to pay twice as much, in premiums and taxes, for a ridiculous Republican-designed system. Too bad.

Otherwise, your first sentence shows an idiotic, greedy, and rapacious attitude towards things that are quite simply not yours.

Adam Smith said that those who have received a greater benefit from society have an obligation to contribute a proportionally greater part of their income to the costs of running that society -- in other words, progressive taxation. You benefited from society. Now pay up. I'm sorry you're not convinced that it's the right thing to do. But it's the law.

Re:Furloughed workers

[sumdumass]

High costs of healthcare is largely due to government involvement in healthcare. It is the single largest factor involved when you look at it.

In 1965, medicare was born and shortly after, the US government attempted to use HMO's to reduce costs. Part of this costs reduction was specifically what you mentioned as in refusing to pay for anything preventative and focusing on actual claims and damages or as you put it, capitalistic greed. The HMO act in the early to mid 70's allowed HMOs to do the same as was a specific attempt at the government to control the medicare costs that seemed to surpass the most liberal estimates. The Federal government divided the country into several economic groups and would only pay a average of the costs for a procedure in each group. What this meant was that if something costs $100 to do profitably at an urban provider and some rural provider who doesn't have the same overhead can do it for $40, the government would only pay $70 which might be below the urban provider's costs. So the medical industry jacks up it's costs in order to get the $100 after the average and the HMO's have a fit. The US government steps in and says if you are offering discounts, then the costs before discount is what they will use for the averaging. So now the government and the HMO's and PPOs get steep discounts to outrageous costing structures designed to satisfy the save money mandate without the recipients receiving less. This problem is further exacerbated by medicare and medicaid now paying only a portion of the average which induces the prices to go up again.

Now, all this was done by well meaning people, generally the same people who were pushing for single payer anyways. People like Ted Kennedy who has stepped up to rescue the health care system time and time again while all along avoiding the fact that the problems people complain about are the results of the last time he saved it.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those hands off people who think the government has no roles in medical care or insurance (which for some reason people cannot distinguish between the two), but the government stepping in is what caused the biggest run up of medical costs in US history and this advent will be no different. The government will not be the answer unless it is willing to seriously look at the problem and people like you who only look at part of the problem will only make it worse.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD UP
u r so right; this sort of thing happens all the time private sector, yet we don't hear about it cause they don't have to tell us

and, I would add, 500 million or so is pretty typical of what I have seen for budgets in the private sector for this kind of project

Re:Furloughed workers

[Penguinisto]

I'm so sorry that, at some point (Reagan,) we made the decision that humans should be taken care of, no matter what.

...that would probably explain why I mentioned Medicaid/Medicare... a lot.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Penguinisto]

Obama didn't sack-up and raise taxes for health care because, after extensive discussions with the Republicans, he concluded that the Republicans would never agree to it. He therefore had to lie and call it something else.

Wrong, because in 2009 (when this monstrosity was introduced) his party had majority control over both houses of Congress - or did you happen to forget that?

So either Obama's administration and supporters either acted out of incompetence, or out of sheer political cowardice... you pick.

Adam Smith said that those who have received a greater benefit from society have an obligation to contribute a proportionally greater part of their income to the costs of running that society -- in other words, progressive taxation.

1) A fixed percentage of income across the board *is* progressive taxation. 10% of one million dollars' income is a hell of a lot larger in absolute dollars than 10% of ten dollars' income. Instead, we end up with regressive taxation, which punishes success and actually rewards failure.

2) Charity and moral obligation are acts of grace, not of enforcement. This is only part of Smith's flaw here.

3) Benefits I've received from society were/are already paid-for, multiple times over - not only in monetary terms, but by a demonstrated oath and life-endangering risks taken to help directly defend the US Constitution from threats both foreign and domestic. Now where are the societal contributions from the largely able-bodied who have done no such thing, continue to milk the system, and yet demand more? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Lookit - I have zero problems with helping the truly helpless. I have even less problem with pitching in to give a hand up instead of a handout.

However, I am very willing to wager that the definition of 'helpless' has expanded so damned much, that the majority of those on public assistance today are perfectly capable of working for their physical needs if they had no other option. Instead, they found a way to avoid it entirely, and to do so at my (and others') expense.

Re:Furloughed workers

[nbauman]

Stop telling me my good insurance is bad. It is better than anything I can get on the exchange. I'm sick and tired of ACA supporters living in denial of the fact that this law is hurting a lot of people.

I don't know what your policy is, but here's an insurance professional who actually tracked down stories like yours on Fox News of people who complained that they would be paying more under Obamacare for insurance they don't need. It turned out that they would actually be paying less under the ACA. Unless you know a lot about health insurance, and you've compared the policies, you don't know that it's better than you can get on the exchanges. Since the low-income policies are heavily subsidized, it's unlikely you could do better with an unsubsidized policy than a subsidized policy.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/
Friday, Oct 18, 2013
Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare
UPDATE I re-reported a Fox News segment on Obamacare -- it was appallingly easy to see how it misleads the audience
By Eric Stern
“Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity announced, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.” Three married couples were neatly arranged in his studio, the wives seated and the men standing behind them, like game show contestants.

As Hannity called on each of them, the guests recounted their “Obamacare” horror stories: canceled policies, premium hikes, restrictions on the freedom to see a doctor of their choice, financial burdens upon their small businesses and so on....

I called Robbie and Tina Robison from Franklin, Tenn. Robbie is self-employed as a Christian youth motivational speaker. (You can see his work here.) On Hannity, the couple said that they, too, were recently notified that their Blue Cross policy would be expiring for lack of ACA compliance. They told Hannity that the replacement plans Blue Cross was offering would come with a rate increase of 50 percent or even 75 percent, and that the new offerings would contain all sorts of benefits they don’t need, like maternity care, pediatric care, prenatal care and so forth. Their kids are grown and moved out, so why should they be forced to pay extra for a health plan with superfluous features?

When I spoke to Robbie, he said he and Tina have been paying a little over $800 a month for their plan, about $10,000 a year. And the ACA-compliant policy that will cost 50-75 percent more? They said this information was related to them by their insurance agent.

Had they shopped on the exchange yet, I asked? No, Tina said, nor would they. They oppose Obamacare and want nothing to do with it. Fair enough, but they should know that I found a plan for them for, at most, $3,700 a year, 63 percent less than their current bill. It might cover things that they don’t need, but so does every insurance policy.

Re:Furloughed workers

[nbauman]

I don't need a fact checker or foxnews to tell me that this law destroyed my ability to get quality affordable healthcare. Wake up, idiot, and listen to what people directly affected by this law are saying rather than the people that are telling you how to think.

There's only one way to answer you. I'm going to have to commit copyright infringement.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/
Friday, Oct 18, 2013
Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare
I re-reported a Fox News segment on Obamacare -- it was appallingly easy to see how it misleads the audience
By Eric Stern

I happened to turn on the Hannity show on Fox News last Friday evening. “Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity announced, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.” Three married couples were neatly arranged in his studio, the wives seated and the men standing behind them, like game show contestants.

As Hannity called on each of them, the guests recounted their “Obamacare” horror stories: canceled policies, premium hikes, restrictions on the freedom to see a doctor of their choice, financial burdens upon their small businesses and so on.

“These are the stories that the media refuses to cover,” Hannity interjected.

But none of it smelled right to me. Nothing these folks were saying jibed with the basic facts of the Affordable Care Act as I understand them. I understand them fairly well; I have worked as a senior adviser to a governor and helped him deal with the new federal rules.

I decided to hit the pavement. I tracked down Hannity’s guests, one by one, and did my own telephone interviews with them.

First I spoke with Paul Cox of Leicester, N.C. He and his wife Michelle had lamented to Hannity that because of Obamacare, they can’t grow their construction business and they have kept their employees below a certain number of hours, so that they are part-timers.

Obamacare has no effect on businesses with 49 employees or less. But in our brief conversation on the phone, Paul revealed that he has only four employees. Why the cutback on his workforce? “Well,” he said, “I haven’t been forced to do so, it’s just that I’ve chosen to do so. I have to deal with increased costs.” What costs? And how, I asked him, is any of it due to Obamacare? There was a long pause, after which he said he’d call me back. He never did.

There is only one Obamacare requirement that applies to a company of this size: workers must be notified of the existence of the “healthcare.gov” website, the insurance exchange. That’s all.

Next I called Allison Denijs. She’d told Hannity that she pays over $13,000 a year in premiums. Like the other guests, she said she had recently gotten a letter from Blue Cross saying that her policy was being terminated and a new, ACA-compliant policy would take its place. She says this shows that Obama lied when he promised Americans that we could keep our existing policies.

Allison’s husband left his job a few years ago, one with benefits at a big company, to start his own business. Since then they’ve been buying insurance on the open market, and are now paying around $1,100 a month for a policy with a $2,500 deductible per family member, with hefty annual premium hikes. One of their two children is not covered under the policy. She has a preexisting condition that would require purchasing additional coverage for $600 a month, which would bring the family’s grand total to around $20,000 a year.

I asked Allison if she’d shopped on the exchange, to see what a plan might cost under the new law

Re:Furloughed workers

[Bartles]

Can I have some of what you're smoking? How did you get to the planet you're living on? My insurance will increase from 165$ to 451$ with a 500$ higher deductible, and a higher yearly cap on out of pocket expenses. It's the same insurance company. It is the only company that offers exchange insurance in my county. On ehealthinsurance.com I have 101 choices for insurance that starts this year, on the exchange I have 9 choices for insurance that starts next year. What part of that do you not understand? I don't care what foxnews says. I don't care what fact checkers say. They are wrong. If I want a high deductible plan, bronze level, the premium is 255$, my current insurance is better than the platinum level plans available.

Re:Furloughed workers

[nbauman]

So your stance is the same as the President's: "I know I lied. I had to, so I could be reelected.

I didn't lie. I didn't vote for Obama or support him. I supported a single-payer system, which would cost half as much for the same coverage. And your choice of any doctor in the country.

You are too stupid to make your own health decisions."

That's true.

Lots of people lost the insurance that was helping them treat their preexisting conditions, like cancer.

Name one.

(Here's the fact-checking story BTW. http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/ )

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

After 20 years of employment in the private sector, I can provide anecdotal evidence that there is no more efficiency in it compared to public. At no place have I worked (many of them Fortune 500-50 companies) has the percentage of workers doing skilled labor actually been above 10%. About 90% of private sector workers could get laid off tomorrow, and not a thing would change because they are all dead weight. Sadly, that dead weight also comprises the ones handling the paychecks and making the choice of who gets laid off, so they will continue to psychologically torture the underlings into submission (as they always have done, and will likely continue to do) and leech off the private sector's infinite reserves of government subsidized income.

Re:Furloughed workers

[nbauman]

I don't know the specifics of where you live or what your insurance policy is.

If your insurance company is telling you that you have to pay more for worse insurance after the ACA, then you should talk to somebody who knows a lot about health insurance, who isn't making money out of you, and who can give you objective advice about how to get insurance cheaper.

If you can't find anybody else, ask Eric Stern. https://twitter.com/_ericstern He was able to show people in your situation how to save thousands of dollars a year.

Here's the Kaiser subsidy calculator. http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/

Re:Furloughed workers

[Bartles]

Who said I was eligible for subsidies? My income happens to be too low. I am involved with a startup, and my income is low right now because I am living off the initial capital loan, while everything else goes into the business. If I want subsidized insurance I have to enroll in medicaid. I bet you didn't realize that if your income is too low your only option for subsidized insurance is medicaid. I wouldn't touch that crap with a 10 foot pole.

Re:Furloughed workers

[nbauman]

I don't know what would happen in that situation.

I recommend you talk to someone who is not affiliated with your insurance company who knows a lot about insurance. There might be a way for you to save a lot of money.

There were a lot of people who were eligible for benefits under ACA and didn't realize it.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Bartles]

What are these benefits you speak of? Do you mean subsidies? The ACA doesn't offer benefits. It just forces people to buy insurance with a federal government middle man and more rules added to the mix.

Re:Furloughed workers

[nbauman]

Here's an article that seems to say that people with low incomes can get subsidies to apply to commercial insurance, but it doesn't quite come out and say that.

I do agree with everyone who says that the ACA is needlessly complicated and that it's hard to get authoritative information on it. They seem to have said, "Yes, it is complicated, but we'll have a web site where people can figure it out." I don't defend Obama.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/health/some-canceled-insurance-policies-were-junk-insurance-targeted-by-law/2151587
Some canceled insurance policies were 'junk' targeted by law
Jodie Tillman, Times Staff Writer
Friday, November 8, 2013 6:03pm

Recent days have made it clear that millions of Americans who bought health insurance on the individual market can't do what President Barack Obama said they could: keep their current health plan if they like it.

But some of those now-lamented plans weren't even what most people would consider insurance.

Known as "mini-meds'' or "junk insurance,'' these products often are little more than discount cards that can leave unknowing consumers with huge medical debt. Even a policy expert from the conservative Heritage Foundation, no fan of the Affordable Care Act, says they aren't worth keeping....

Indeed, Michael didn't know they qualify for a tax credit until a Times reporter entered his information into an online subsidy calculator on ehealth, a Web-based broker licensed to sell products through the federal marketplace. It estimated their credit at nearly $10,000 a year — enough to buy affordable insurance for both Palins.

"That'd be great," said Michael Palin.

Said McDonough, the Harvard professor: "Many of these people who think they are losers turn out to be winners."

Re:Furloughed workers

[_Sharp'r_]

So, what you're stating is that inflation adjusted dollars (in the chart I linked to) don't adjust for inflation? Hmmm... seems you may have misread something. As Magius confirms below, revenue and spending are both up, spending is up more. You can blame that on war spending or hookers and blow for Obama's special family friends, either way, still have to reign it in to fix the deficit/debt.

As for your other point, using % of GDP is basically useless. GDP varies based on the state of the economy, so the exact same level of spending from year to year will be a varying percentage of GDP. Also, government spending is counted as part of standard GDP. What kind of comparison is that for showing if it's increased or not? It's primary use is to try and disguise real money increases as not being as bad, because the economy has also grown.

Now if you wanted to use spending in constant dollars per capita, that might be somewhat useful, as you can argue at least some things cost more with more people (things like national defense don't really change much, but some others do). Even with that, you'd have to argue that at 10-12% population change since 2000 needed a 50%+ increase in spending. So that's a tough argument to make...

Re:Furloughed workers

[_Sharp'r_]

Revenue is about the same per capita over an extended period of time. It will go up and down with economic conditions, and economic conditions are still a bit down lately, so revenue will be as well until that has turned around. Studies have been done showing that despite historical tax rate changes, revenue generally stays in a similar range. You can cut taxes and increase growth a little, or you can raise certain taxes and divert resources to avoidance and paperwork, but it's really not that big of an impact. You have to have economic activity in order to tax it, unless we're going to switch to a model of confiscating based on saved wealth directly.

Government spending, on the other hand, has significantly increased. You can blame the war/terrorism funding, or the bailouts, or the wasteful spending to cronies of those in power, or increase entitlements for an aging population, but you can't deny that it's increased significantly, no matter how you want to measure it.

So the only really serious conversation to have about fixing debt/deficit issues is what you want to cut in terms of spending. If we could get the right-wing to agree to cut defense/anti-terrorism spending and the left-wing to cut environmental/wealth transfer boondoggles, and/or slightly increase the age for retirement for SS/Medicare, or cut the useless ACA, or whatever, even if overall only by 5-10% around current spending levels year-over-year it could be solved pretty quickly.

But there doesn't seem to be much interest in that sort of thing. People are more interested in trying to score political points.

Re:Furloughed workers

[_Sharp'r_]

If you go by history, democrats know how to balance the budget and bring deficits down.

Please name the last year in which Democrats controlled Congress (The folks who make the ultimate funding decisions) and managed to balance the budget and reduce the deficit?

Oops, has never happened, has it? Only time we've even come close in recent memory was when the Republicans "shut the government down" in opposition to Clinton and they negotiated a somewhat reasonable budget. Hint: Clinton's suggested budgets were much higher than what got passed by Congress.

Re:Furloughed workers

[_Sharp'r_]

Here's a useful chart covering spending and revenue with who controlled what. People like to talk about Presidential "spending", but the reality is that Congress can spend anything they want without the President (supermajority), but the President can't spend a dime without Congress.

Reagan asked for less spending than Congress ever gave him. Clinton asked for more spending than Congress ever gave him.

Re: Furloughed workers

[ceriphim]

You twat. First off, regressive taxation punishes failure and rewards success, you got it backwards. Secondly, as someone who has been unemployed the past three months for the first time since I was 12 years old (I'm 33), I've also paid for my benefits many times over. You know what though? If I wasn't married and my wife didn't work, I would be fucked. Have you tried to live on CA unemployment? Even at the maximum possible payout, it's barely subsistence living. Get some perspective before you spout off like an ignorant child.

Re: Furloughed workers

[petsounds]

During the first dot com bomb I lived on CA unemployment for about 6 months. If memory serves, my payment checks were about 75% of my previous income, which I don't really remember, but I think it was $60-70k at the time. Barely subsistence living? I mean granted I was living in a rent controlled apartment (back before the apartment owner lobbyists fucked everyone over and got the state legislature to get rid of rent control), but still, that's a completely reasonable middle-class salary. You must have been living pretty high on the hog before you became unemployed, so maybe there is a payout limit I never hit back then, but don't act like the payout is minimum wage.

Re: Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone please mod up. Not at a terminal to give points, but seriously. This is -exactly- the point... For every person I subsidize there are ten fold abusing that system, but yet we insist on expanding its power, while burdening the tax payer even further. It's fscking retarded.

Re: Furloughed workers

[ceriphim]

Living "high on the hog" is a relative term in San Diego. In any case, CA unemployment caps out at $450 a week (that's pre-tax, post-tax it's $360). For those who are mathematically challenged, that's $11.25 an hour before tax, $9 an hour after tax. Luckily I had savings, planned conservatively, and am married - otherwise I'd have lost a lot more than just my pride when my position was eliminated as a "reduction in force".

Re: Furloughed workers

[petsounds]

They must've changed the unemployment caps in the last few years then. Sorry to hear about your difficulties, and hope you get back on the horse soon.

Re: Furloughed workers

[ceriphim]

That's gracious of you, and it's appreciated.

Re:Furloughed workers

[bgalbrecht]

If I want subsidized insurance I have to enroll in medicaid. I bet you didn't realize that if your income is too low your only option for subsidized insurance is medicaid. I wouldn't touch that crap with a 10 foot pole.

What do you think Medicaid is? Under Obamacare, it's that exchange insurance policy with a subsidy. You'll be paying your portion of the premium to the insurance company and the government pays the rest. You don't have to take the bronze plan in order to get the subsidy, either.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Take the check to your local SSI admin office.
Go back to speak to the person in charge of overdue accounts.
Open the door.
Get on the floor.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

DAETH PANEL

Re: Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

You and I think very much alike. Thanks!

Re:Furloughed workers

[HornWumpus]

If I send you a bill will you pay that too?

Why didn't you tell A to fuck themselves?

Re:Furloughed workers

[spectrumlogic]

Really? This is little more than a weak rendition of the "death panel" ploy. Do you actually believe someone you trust more (or have more control over) will magically be "in charge of your healthcare" if this current plan fails? Would you prefer facing a corporate "death panel"? This specious question could only be effective in the vacuum of uninformed debate.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Going to be? It has been, is, and always will be. This is what you could call a lifetime disaster!

Re: Furloughed workers

[MrMarket]

Governments pay every Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Above]

Tax revenues are always a percentage of GDP. Because of that, GDP is absolutely relevant.

In a nation that is not tied to a monitory standard (like gold), the government controls the inflation rate. Thus the rate of inflation and the rate of GDP growth are not the same.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Medicare, as an example, works really well. Its costs have remained relatively flat in comparison to health costs in general. Other government agencies like the Park Service, FEMA (now that Bush is gone) for disaster relief; federal fire response (Forest Service, BLM, Boise Interagency fire center) -- all work very well and do tasks that can't be handled efficiently or effectively at the local level. In spite of your interpretation (?) of your wife's work experience, I'd say Social Security runs well. My wife and I just signed up last month. A guy from SS called me within 3 days to clarify some entries on my form, suggested how I might have done it better for maximum benefits and asked permission to go ahead with that plan. My wife's application was approved in days. That's pretty efficient and it's the government.

Health insurance WAS run by the private sector. I was and am a paying customer. They made their profits by denying coverage to you if you were sick. Brilliant business model -- pay us money for no service (I exaggerate for effect....). But they did deny you if you had pre-existing condition which, by age 40 or so, is almost everyone.

Which is all to say that, absolutely, this is an area where government can do far better than the private sector.

Incidentally, I just signed up in California for ACA insurance. Went smoothly and ended up with a better policy and far, far lower rates for our income (from $1,100/ month to under $200). Yes, it's subsidized but see Unordained's response to that (above).

Re:Furloughed workers

[RespekMyAthorati]

Damn straight!

A what about those federal highways that I'll never drive on? Why should I pay for those?
And what about those federal buildings in Washington? I've never even been there.
And what about those multi-billion dollar spacecraft? I don't even know how to drive one.

Re: Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Very true, and all spending bills and taxation must originate in the house, not the Senate.

Fault #1 for ACA - the "taxation"/"penalty" originated in the Senate, not the House; so it cannot be a "tax" (per SCOTUS), but it's not legally a "penalty" either (per SCOTUS).

Fault #1 for the Democrats - the House has passed budgets every years; but the Senate refuses to approve it and Obama refuses to sign them.

Re:Furloughed workers

[euroq]

It specifically says "NASA, defense-related" not "NASA". Same with the others. And FYI, the NASA and State Departments are minuscule. It's important to process the information after you find it.

Re:Furloughed workers

[intermodal]

Both parties bear the responsibility of that one, unixcrab.

Re:Furloughed workers

[intermodal]

On the positive end, you may be dead before they figure it out.

Re:Furloughed workers

[Magius_AR]

Tax revenues are always a percentage of GDP. Because of that, GDP is absolutely relevant.

No it isn't, because GDP is a constant in that equation (namely, if you're using "revenue as % of GDP", you're also using "spending as % of GDP"). GDP hence does not matter because the end result is the same when the GDP component drops out.

If you absolutely must use GDP, you'll see the same result: higher spending and higher revenue:

2014 US GDP: 15.7 trillion
2014 federal budget: 3.8 trillion
2014 revenue projections: 3 trillion

2014 spending/GDP: 24% of GDP
2014 revenue/GDP: 19% of GDP

2002 US GDP: 10.6 trillion
2002 federal budget: 2 trillion
2002 revenue: 1.85 trillion

2002 spending/GDP: 19% of GDP
2002 revenue/GDP: 17% of GDP

Re:Furloughed workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Lesson learned: USPS is really quite good at their job.

Darrell 'Fraud' Issa

[StephenThomasKrausJr]

Seriously, why cite Issa? They guy still screws about Benghazi, spreads conspiracy theories and is a fraudster. He could discover aliens aliens and I'd still rather hear it from someone else.

Re:Darrell 'Fraud' Issa

[Thanshin]

"aliens' aliens" ... is us, right?

Re:Darrell 'Fraud' Issa

[PontifexMaximus]

Seriously? You really think 4 deaths because of the WH not doing it's job is a 'conspiracy theory'? You think if it was YOUR family murdered by Islamic terrorists that you'd call it a conspiracy theory? You, my friend, are the reason why this country is so screwed. You think the important things are trivial while you rant and rave about how 'outrageous' it is that the Redskins name is still being used.

Get your priorities straight before you start frothing at the mouth about conspiracy theories. Moron.

Re:Darrell 'Fraud' Issa

[Anonymous Coward]

"aliens' aliens" ... is us, right?

Not necessarily. There are more than two countries in the world.

Re:Darrell 'Fraud' Issa

[clickclickdrone]

Not necessarily. There are more than two countries in the world.

That'll come as a shock to many Americans who think the globe is divided into 'America' and 'Them'.

Re:Darrell 'Fraud' Issa

[Nimey]

Strawman and misdirection: OP said nothing about the Redskins; your point must be a poor one if you've got to lie about what the grandparent said.

Re:Darrell 'Fraud' Issa

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was so important, then someone other than the new Ken Starr should be working on this - otherwise it comes across as a petty attempt at politics instead of an issue that people resonate with. Remember that 13 other Benghazi's happened under Bush's watch. But then again, Obama didn't lie about weapons of mass destruction, ending the lives of hundreds of thousands.

Re:Darrell 'Fraud' Issa

[clickclickdrone]

I'm sorry, I seemed to have gotten sidetracked there. What was your point again?

Dunno but good comeback. Win.

Re:Darrell 'Fraud' Issa

[Goldsmith]

This roll out is a great example of why meaningful oversight (and competent competition) is necessary in the government. If Issa had been doing this 6 months ago, the healthcare website may have worked. You don't need to like him, but in this case, putting the screws to contractors and government personnel is the right thing to do.

Re:Darrell 'Fraud' Issa

[I'm New Around Here]

Thanks. I hope I didn't sound too much like a dick.

.
I hope Ferris is doing better by the weekend. Maybe he should take a drive and get some fresh air.

A better title for this post should have been...

[bogaboga]

"War Room" Notes Describe IT Chaos At Healthcare.gov

"Third World characteristics describe War Room deliberations at Healthcare.gov."

After all, had this happened in some far away land, we'd be congratulating ourselves for "not being them", right? And how we, being the "first world", are better at implementation, with "checks" and "balances" at every step.

A strange game

[Gothmolly]

The only winning move is not to play.

Lowest bidder wins...

[Ashenkase]

But ends up costing multiple times more in the end.

Re:Lowest bidder wins...

[Anonymous Coward]

But ends up costing multiple times more in the end.

Oh, not just any lowest bidder.

Michelle Obama's Princeton classmate Toni Townes-Whitley, who was a member of Princeton groups "Third World Center" and "Organization of Black Unity" along with Michelle...

Chicago crony/thug politics at its best.

It ain't hard to find.

But you won't see that in the NY Times, now will you?

Re:Lowest bidder wins...

[Anonymous Coward]

But ends up costing multiple times more in the end.

Yes, as opposed to buying something like Oracle, where the highest bidder wins, and also ends up costing multiple times in the end.

Re:Lowest bidder wins...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Organization of Black Unity"

Wow. That sounds pretty scary. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I'll now forward it to my list of racist friends who already agree with me.

Chicago crony/thug politics at its best.

Chicago! That's one of those black cities, isn't it.. thug politics.... the pieces are all falling into place.

Re:Lowest bidder wins...

[flanders123]

Lowest bidder, or only bidder?

This is an honest question...If you Google "who bid on healthcare.gov" several seemingly right-leaning sites say there was only one bid and it was won by Ms Obama's crony CGI.

Reuters and others say there were 4 total bids, although I cannot find who those other 3 bidders are or what their bids were. And the end of that article states "No other IT contractors have come forward to say they, too, bid on the contract to build Healthcare.gov."

So honest question: which is it? As the project sponsor (taxpayer) I'd like to know. As an IT Professional that runs web projects (in the private sector) I would get fired for not getting competing bids on a project with budgets order of magnitude less than this.

Re:Lowest bidder wins...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you were just as outraged at the no-bid contracts awarded to the previous President and VP's buddies in Iraq that cost exponentially more money to the American public.

Re:Lowest bidder wins...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most companies don't like to brag that they *didn't* win a government contract, so it's not surprising in the least that there may have been 4 bids, but no company has come forward to claim they were one of the losing 3. A simple FOIA request would solve that puzzle, but as long as the single-bid rhetoric is flowing nobody who wants to bash the administration has anything to gain from actually showing that there were 4 bits.

Despite the failures of

[cookYourDog]

Vietnam, Iraq, the postal service, the NSA Utah data center, the response to hurricane Katrina, prohibition, no child left behind, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, shuttle Columbia, the great society, Japanese internment camps, Guantanamo, the F35 program, the war on terror, Fannie Mae, Amtrak, Railhead, Teton dam, Fair Housing act, TIDE, Social Security, the Bay of Pigs, Olmsted dam, Mariner 1, Iran-Iraq war, Solyndra, and IRS modernization...

...they were bound to get healthcare.gov right.

Re:Despite the failures of

[tekrat]

You forgot how troops were sent into the Iraq war without body armor, and the families of soldiers had to take up collections of donations to buy body armor for their sons and daughters because the military wouldn't supply it to the troops. That's our federal government right there.

Re:Despite the failures of

[adolf]

You forgot how we didn't have troops in body armor during our first invasion of Iraq. You might have also forgot that we didn't armor HMMWVs back then, either.

Security?

[Mr D from 63]

Who feels confident that cyber-security protocols can be effectively managed under these conditions?

you are full of it, stop

[luis_a_espinal]

You mean the party that kept sending bills to the senate while the Dems said only "NO, NO, NO! We'd rather have a mandated shutdown!"?

You mean

1. bills meant to defund or stop the implementation of something that is already a law?
2. The Party that right now is blocking the LGBT protection bill in the House?
3. The party who still cannot comprehend why *WE* fucking loss elections in Virginia????
4. Who still does not get why the Tealiban lost just a couple of days ago in Alabama????
5. The party who still caters to the likes who think in terms of "legitimate rape"???
6. The party who still has prominent members who cannot bring themselves to say Obama is a US-born citizen?
7. The party who still caters to the likes who think everyone that voted Democrat is a moocher looking for a hand-out?

That party you mean???

This is not to say the Dems are blameless, but for fuck's sake, stop saying the GOP is the party that keeps sending bills to the senate. That's fucking bullshit, and you know it.

Truly yours, a life-long Republican tired of seeing a sea of stupid beasts more interested in destruction, confederate-flag waving, secession, creationism, birtherism, social-medieval conservatism-barbarism and just blatant mental anachronisms than on making things work with the other half of the population who does not agree with everything they say...

... (or maybe I'm just a RINO according to the ideological purists that more and more resemble the Khmer Rouge in their fight for doctrine's purity. I can live with that label.)

Re:you are full of it, stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, you're a RINO.

They house did keep sending bills to fund the government. Harry 'why would we want to do that' Reid would rather kick veterans out of the World War II memorial than talk rationally about the issues raised. What were the onerous negotiating points? Delaying the individual mandate a year. Eliminate the tax on medical devices. Eliminate the subsidy for congress. A statesman could have met them half way, but that's not Harry's way. He'd rather just call people names, just like the president.

As for the rest of your nonsense, I don't get the vitriol towards the Taxed Enough Already party. There is nothing radical in their platform, Are there occasional kooks in the party? sure. Just like the kook's in the Democrat party, like Allan Grayson. And how about Carlos Danger? Does he represent all Democrats? Maxine Waters? Charles Baron? They are all nuts.

Re:you are full of it, stop

[Kelbear]

This was a very interesting debate on this very issue:
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/801-the-gop-must-seize-the-center-or-die

The classical concept of the Republican platform has broad appeal. It's why I had registered as a Republican all those years ago, but my registration doesn't guarantee my vote, the GOP doesn't offer many opportunities to vote for those kinds of ideals anymore. The GOP needs to find those ideals again to recover the popular vote, but it looks like things are going to have to get worse for the party before it learns how to get better.

Re:you are full of it, stop

[Metrol]

bills meant to defund or stop the implementation of something that is already a law?

Well, yeah. That's the exact job of the House of Reps. Please refer to the constitution for any further guidance on this matter.

Re:you are full of it, stop

[dfenstrate]

You're not a RINO, you're a leftist. Anyone who makes claim to being a disillusioned 'life-long republican' is likely full of sh*t, especially if such claim follows a litany of cherry-picked, overblown complaints straight out of the Alinsky playbook for mocking opponents.

Re:you are full of it, stop

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean

1. bills meant to defund or stop the implementation of something that is already a law?

Tell me then, why do Democrats keep trying for Gun Control when free unrestricted access is not only law, it's in the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the land?

Re:you are full of it, stop

[Anonymous Coward]

The brilliant thing about this post is that it's nearly impossible to tell if you're satirizing the nutjob contigent of the right wing, or if you're a vocal member of those very nutjobs.

So how do we tell? Let's ask the following question: Do you think that Barrychoom Fartbongo the Dog Eater is a marxist?

Re:you are full of it, stop

[Metrol]

Seeing as how my original comment has gone from -2 flamebait to +3 informative in less than an hour, I felt I should better explain this statement. First off, I wasn't fully accurate about the constitution stating the House has the exclusive power of the purse. It seems this is more historical precedence than stated fact. Please refer to the following FAQ that explains this better than I could.

Furthermore, because a program exists does not automatically assume that it will be fully funded. Even the military has to have approval for its funds every year, and it's not just a law but a constitutional requirement. The power to not fund a project is an important check on power that legislature has. It didn't just vanish because proponents of the ACA wanted to make this a talking point.

Not only is it perfectly legitimate to remove funding from a program, it would be dishonest for representatives of people who want to see a program abolished to not try to do this very thing. Representing constituents is what they are all supposed to be doing.

The funny part in all this is that initially the Republican proposal was to fund everything except the ACA. Then they backed down to delaying it for one year. Then they backed down to just forcing federal employees to make use of the exchanges instead of what they have today. Before this is all done, I'll bet there's going to be plenty of Democrats who wish they'd gone with that delay for a year deal.

I'd still love to see Harry Reid and all the folks that voted this on us to have to actually use it themselves. Apparently they're too good for that.

Re:you are full of it, stop

[dfenstrate]

I'm a lifelong democrat, but then i realized the more democrats win elections, the more they ruin the country.

Re:you are full of it, stop

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you've been paying much attention the past few decades. The Republican party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the military-industrial, for-profit-prison, evangelical, health insurance, and federal intelligence complexes. This was shown undebatably so in 2000. The Democratic party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the entertainment, environmental, and technology complexes. Neither side can embrace a center, all they do is pull the center in twain. And since Democrats are politically just moderate Conservatives, the whole issue isn't about centrism at all, it's just stupid partisanship; the divide and conquer strategy.

Re:you are full of it, stop

[luis_a_espinal]

You're not a RINO, you're a leftist. Anyone who makes claim to being a disillusioned 'life-long republican' is likely full of sh*t, especially if such claim follows a litany of cherry-picked, overblown complaints straight out of the Alinsky playbook for mocking opponents.

Typical Marxist-like response. Only you know the true dogma. All hail the fuck out of you.

Underfunded

[lwriemen8809]

CBO estimated ACA would require $10B. Congress approved $1B. http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2013/10/why-not-take-victory-lap-on-obamacare.html?m=1

Re:Underfunded

[Tony Isaac]

And Facebook operated for 6 years on $500 million.
Twitter operated for 5 years on $360 million.
LinkedIn has spent $200 million.
Spotify has spent $288 million.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/opinion/obamacare-healthcare-gov-website-cost/

all wrong

[slashmydots]

That's all fluff and deflecting the real problem. They hired idiot contractors who suck at their job and were just there to make everything overpriced and make a fortune for the company owner. THAT is the real problem.

Proper criticism

[onyxruby]

The thing is that things are now working the way they should be. That is were now criticizing the web site, the process, the contracts and learning lessons. This is how government is supposed to work. The republicans are going to town with criticizing the many faults of the website - which is perfectly fair and what they should have done to begin with. The Republicans never should have held the American public hostage to try and kill the ACA and they did tremendous damage to the economy by shutting down the government.

The Democrats meanwhile should be held accountable for an absolutely atrocious website and project that never would have passed even the most basic of reviews in the private world. The Republican criticisms of the website are pretty much well founded from what I have seen. If the Democrats had reached out to the private sector instead of designing the thing by political committee it could have been built to a much higher standard.

I'm not taking sides on this argument, what I am doing is saying that all government across the political spectrum should be held to this level of scrutiny and accountability. The long standing methods of bidding out government work have led to nothing but rampant fraud and inefficiencies that could never work anywhere except the federal government. Reform is needed, and if this website finally causes reform of government bidding and projects than it will have done more good than it ever meant too.

Re:Proper criticism

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain how the Republicans held anyone hostage?

They offered up several proposals that covered all spending/benefits BUT ACA, so that no one would go w/o while they hashed out their ACA differences..

Did the Senate look twice at any of these continuing resolutions?

Nope..
 

Re:Proper criticism

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, yes. The Senate followed the normal procedures when the House voted on those and sent them up. They looked at them, made the revisions they felt appropriate, and voted on the revised bills. The normal process then stalled because the Republicans had modified long-standing House rules which allowed *any* Representative to call for a vote on the Senate version of a bill the House had passed. That's the normal reconciliation process, with tweaks at either/both ends until they come to an agreement between the House and Senate.

Under the Republican-revised process, only the House Majority Leader or his designated representative could call for such a vote.

So in otherwords...

[cjjjer]

Just like most large scale web deployments where there is instant user base of millions...

Re:So in otherwords...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like most large scale web deployments where there is instant user base of millions...

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

You'd think someone could type "web load testing" into wikipedia.

If they had, they would have found their missing 'instant user base of millions.'

Instead, they are all making excuses to cover their incompetency and claiming they had no way to test the website.

And lets not forget, this law only affects a small percentage of the public, those without insurance, even tho when it was being sold to the public, it was proclaimed as the second comming of christ, here to save everyone from a life of sin.

Hark the herald, angels sing, Obama is, our newly elected king !

Re:So in otherwords...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are definitely not someone that has actually done load testing. It is extremely difficult to do well. There is a reason Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter all experienced massive outages as their user bases grew tremendously fast. There is a reason Netflix, Amazon, and Microsoft have all experienced similar problems with their cloud integrations.

I would not say that a law encompassing at least 30 million people is a small percentage of the public. I don't know if you noticed, but my health insurance premiums being not a part of those 30 million has doubled three times in the last 7 years. Does that strike you as sustainable? Or do you think doing nothing would have solved the problem?

No. Toni Townes-Whitley

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how Republicans haven't pointed that out.

Google that name. And her connection to the Obamas.

Lesson to all business side folks

[Andover Chick]

I work at a major bank. This sort of non-sense has peaked in recent years at big organizations. One would have thought the business side would have become more IT savvy in the past couple of decades. Instead, they still think a magic wand can be waved in the USA or India which will cause a computer system to emerge. Perhaps the business side users are peddled such fantasy by Infosys, Tata, EDS, CGI, CSC, etc. But more likely it's business users who refuse to work collaboratively with IT. They think because they got a bunch of low cost Indian or American programmers, usually with one dimensional skills sets, whacking away at the keyboard that a quality system will emerge. Instead, they get crap. It's like a parade ground crowed with marchers who have no coordinated direction. There's no orchestration, no appreciation for logistics, and not sense of engineering. If an engineer tells the business side something cannot get done, then they replace the engineer with someone who'll tell what they want to hear. The best analogy is Hitler working with his generals in WWII. He thought flags on the battle maps could be moved around like a paste-it board, not concept of logistics. And when a general told Hitler his plans were imbecilic, then the general was shot. Thankfully for humanity Hitler's idiocy destroyed the Third Reich. What else will the business users destroy?

Re:Lesson to all business side folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up.

-Velex

Re: Lesson to all business side folks

[lwriemen8809]

Technical side gets plenty of blame. Where are the software metrics that can give a rough estimate on how much effort a project should take? Not easily available, because most of the software world resists FPA.) Where are the reusable domains? Non-existent, because most of the software developers want to stay at the 3GL level.

Re:Lesson to all business side folks

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know, Hitler only really screwed up once. He overruled his generals for the first part of the war, surprising the shit out of everyone, taking most of Europe extremely quickly. Where he started to screw up was in Russia, and it boiled down essentially to one decision to split forces when going for Moscow, etc. So I wouldn't cite Hitler as an example here. Well, actually, I suppose when he failed to listen to the admiral in charge of the submarines telling him that their code was broken, that was a pretty serious mistake. Had the Germans acted on our breaking of their codes, they would not have lost their submarine fleet and the Atlantic.

So early days, Hitler was right, and his generals were wrong. Later, he should have listened to his generals. But fortunately, he didn't.

Re:Lesson to all business side folks

[cephus440]

The winners write the history books. We would be saying that he was a genius and saved us from our pending, self inflicted DOOM... or was that Wolfenstein.

Re:Lesson to all business side folks

[Andover Chick]

You're right about the pre-1943 campaign choices Hitler made. Splitting of forces and then fixating on Stalingrad, even as his generals pleaded to retreat, was his most spectacular campaign blunder. But he did interfere with the Battle of Kursk in 1943 when Manstein wanted to hold the Donetz bain. Also, he meddled in other ways, especially in development projects. He wanted the ME 262 to be a Schnellbomber attack aircraft, which delayed the project. He used the V2 overwhelmingly against England when he should have used against various targets (i.e. Russia). He had a bizarre fixation on a giant tanks and massive artillery pieces, which diverted resources.

Re:Lesson to all business side folks

[Andover Chick]

Btw, apologies everyone from shifting the subject away from Healthcare.gov. It just that WWII is just such a great subject when it come to the consequences of mixing politicians with sci/tech...

Sounds like the typical IT rollout to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Complete with mismatching production servers and key staff going out on vacation

3 guys in a garage fallacy!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"A small team could have written that website in the time allotted without issues provided the specs didn't change. The cost of the site and the number of people involved is insane and demonstrates the consultants took them for a ride.

I bet it was cheap, inexperienced developers who had no clue how to build a scalable site."

Nope..
a) specs change, all the time, particularly a big system. In this case, they're basically implementing state exchanges for those states that decided (some at the last minute) not to build their own.
b) Have you looked at the number of systems that needed to be interconnected here? This isn't some order fulfillment and shipping application all under control of one corporate entity. You need to fetch income data from IRS, validation data from SSA, etc. It's not like the government has some unified enterprise architecture with a central repository to get all this data from. Heck, I'll bet most of those interfaces don't even have current documentation.
c) Most companies building these kinds of systems don't have 30+ partners (i.e. states) actively trying to subvert the goals of the system (We don't like the ACA, and we're not going to do anything to help you build the exchange we decided not to build, leaving it for you).

And of course, because of the byzantine way in which the government procures services and stuff (driven by Congress, and largely to make sure the taxpayer doesn't get screwed), the work is divided up into multiple contracts, administered by multiple agencies, so there is ample opportunity for "throw it over the wall".

Yeah, if the US were run by King Jeff or Czar Michael or Czarina Meg, and they could issue a ukase to "make it so", of course your small team could do it. But that's not how the US works.

The lowest bidder

[Anonymous Coward]

. . .is the clown who doesn't show up on election day to vote.

But the irony of ObamaCare is that all of the focus is on Healthcare.gov, not the overarching stupidity of trying to centralize all this control in the first place.

Standard War Room activities

[z_gringo]

All that reads like pretty standard War Room activities for a launch of this size. There is a reason they chose the name "War Room" for these things. It is just a central location where issues are triaged, and it can be chaotic after a launch. This is an example of the press trying to make a big story out of something that isn't news by reporting on something that most people don't understand.

I would be more concerned by the lack of a war room than from war room chaos.

Re:Standard War Room activities

[mythosaz]

This, a thousand times this.

Other than a tiny bit of techno-political double-speak from the project manager in the Meeting Notes Template that gets copied to every new day's meeting notes, it reads pretty much like any large multi-departmental IT project that I've ever been involved in.

And, considering some idiot in Congress is going to read the meeting notes some day, the TPDS is understandable. The Jr. Senator from the Great State of Fly-Over needs to have it explained that CIRT is a "Tiger Team" -- or as us actual workers call it, "the smart guys who fix other people's fuckups."

Re:Standard War Room activities

[Anonymous Coward]

We only need two words to put this in proper perspective: DARRELL ISSA.

Seriously people, he is the GOP's head witch hunter, and is at the core of every partisan effort in Congress to "investigate wrongdoing".

Do a simple google search for his behavior as chair of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform - Benghazi, Fast and Furious, TARP, 9/11 payments, ACA, every fake or overblown "scandal" that the right tries to pin on Obama, he is at the center of it.

Re:Standard War Room activities

[antdude]

My employer's department (20? people in total in the local office) has a tiny war room. It can only seat maybe five/5 people for the round table. Is that good or bad? I chuckled at it is even called a war room. :P

47 contractors

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know much about this type of developement but on wikipedia it says "The Sunlight Foundation has stated that at least forty-seven private company contractors have been involved with the PPACA in some capacity as of fall 2013". Is that normal for a project like this?

Sounds like an MMO launch

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like any MMO launch day, insufficiently planned scaling and not enough resources to deal with it, nor a good plan on how to scale up quickly.

Re:Sounds like an MMO launch

[leuk_he]

Which makes me wonder. Why do managers insist on big bang launches. Why not some phasing in , so the problems can be handled, and when the big rush is coming, the bleeding edge problems are solved.

There are always problems in the release of a BIG system. take some time to solve them before letting it loose on the user.

In the MMO some of the best releases have a long public beta time, where in the last phase the beta is open, to get some decent load.

Re:Sounds like an MMO launch

[mythosaz]

Government projects often come with deadlines and mandates for availability.

If you're ahead of schedule, great.

If you're behind a Congressionally mandated deadline, you're screwed.

Answer: Omni Consumer Products

[Anonymous Coward]

Privatize the federal government. Omni is ready to help, citizen.

Personal responsibility

[microbox]

So, the SEC will fine me for not being invested in a minimum government approved set of funds,

OMG, you have to pay a fine for not being insured!!! I guess that fine will go towards the actuarial cost you are incurring to society for just existing, and expecting not to die on the side of the street if you fall over an break your leg.

So which is it? Should the government scrap you off the side of the road in case misfortune visits you. If so, should someone else pay, or should you? If you can't afford to pay, shouldn't you be forced to insurance yourself.

What's that zen mantra of conservationism again? "Personal responsibility". Only an ideologue can look at a black wall and say it is white.

Re:Personal responsibility

[cephus440]

Very good point, comrade!

Re:Personal responsibility

[Metrol]

So which is it? Should the government scrap you off the side of the road in case misfortune visits you. If so, should someone else pay, or should you? If you can't afford to pay, shouldn't you be forced to insurance yourself.

If the issue was actually insurance like we issue for cars, then the costs would be trivial. There are really good reasons why this stuff is so expensive. Unfortunately, as we're now finding out, if a company isn't providing everything from birth control to chronic disease care as a complete package then that policy is no longer valid per the ACA. This is why 3.5 million folks who had policies that worked for them no longer do.

And yes, if you break your leg on the side of the street then you should accept the burden of that debt as a part of your existing in our society. All the better for you if you were insured. Otherwise, the bill should be in the mail. Ummm, kinda of like any other part of society I might add. Your leg will still get fixed, but you still owe for a service that was provided to you at some cost.

There were issues that could have been addressed by our government that could have actually helped. Treat chronic illness differently then broken legs for example. Today we toss them all into one big pile, driving up costs on all. Allowed the market place set up a market place, instead of what we now have as conclusive proof that the government is not competent to provide, by allowing interstate sales of policies. The government didn't need to come in and set all this up... it could have gotten the hell out of the way years ago. Definitive guidelines across varying specialities as to what constitutes a valid law suit or not, where huge sums of money get sucked into lawyers pockets.

Ahh, but instead we got this debacle that every right thinking Democrat will be behind 100% regardless of what "should" have happened.

Ya know, it wasn't even a specific policy point that really bothered me about all this. It was how this thing was passed. Nobody read the damn thing! A bill that important couldn't reach across the aisle for a single vote from the other party. This massive 2,000 page beast that should have been hashed out in committee, which is the normal process, was instead rammed through using parliamentary trickery. How could any reasonable human being expect this was going to go well regardless of your political affiliations?

Now we know the president either lied outright about what would happen to existing policies, or he was just another one in DC who didn't actually bother to read this bill. If this were a Republican it would be just as damning!

Re:Personal responsibility

[microbox]

If the issue was actually insurance like we issue for cars, then the costs would be trivial. There are really good reasons why this stuff is so expensive.

I think I'll trust an actuary to calculate the actual cost. Put in a reasonable mark-up, and you have: insurance. If the market is, well, efficient, then the mark-up will be reasonable. So let's apply those good-old liberal ideas of free markets, and let the magic happen.

Otherwise, the bill should be in the mail.

And if you can't pay, and declare bankruptcy? Who pays then? You pretending this isn't a problem?

There were issues that could have been addressed by our government that could have actually helped.

Right, like an almost-single-payer system, like what works in most of the OECD. Instead, in an attempt to compromise, we get a regulated insurance market and a mandate, just like leading conservatives supported up until 2008.

What happened in 2008? Obama was elected, adopted the GOP healthcare plan, and was promptly labelled a tyrant by an apocalyptic cult. Just the opinion of a 20+ year GOP insider who knows a hell of a lot more about what happens on the hill than you do.

Now we know the president either lied outright about what would happen to existing policies

You _can_ keep your policy if you like it, so long as you've had the policy since before the ACA was passed. The fact that insurance companies are changing the policies and then trying to up-sell clients onto more expensive planes: who would have thunk it, that businesses would act this way. I agree that Obama shouldn't have used the language he did, because it is too easy to pick apart. But it is hardly the lie you WANT it to be.

Re:Personal responsibility

[Metrol]

And if you can't pay, and declare bankruptcy? Who pays then? You pretending this isn't a problem [cnbc.com]?

And are you pretending the ACA did anything to actually reduce costs are help resolve the problem you're talking about? Did you read the entire article you linked?

With millions buried under medical bills, more insured under the Affordable Care Act will not completely solve that problem, LaMontagne said. While the ACA's reforms will indeed give more people coverage, NerdWallet's data shows that millions of people with year-round, full coverage are still overwhelmed by medical bills, she said.

So, 1-2 trillion dollars that are going to be spent per year, and the very same broken legs are still going to be paid out of pocket. I love this stuff!

You _can_ keep your policy if you like it

Hmmm, I don't seem to recall the disclaimer on the end of that sentence when the president said it. I don't remember ANY wiggle room here. I think the President said this better than I could. Not sure where you'd pick any of this apart.

Instead, President Obama should have said something like, "You can keep your plan... comma insert disclaimer here".

As for this up-sell notion... the policies that got dropped were dropped due to them not offering all the stuff required by the ACA to be offered. These were policies that had existed prior to the ACA implementation. The white house knew many of the policies out there would no longer be allowed to be offered. They knew it when the President was out giving speeches that you would not lose your plan under any circumstances... "period". He was either completely ignorant of the fact, or was out and out fabricating lies. There is no in between.

Re:Personal responsibility

[microbox]

As for this up-sell notion... the policies that got dropped were dropped due to them not offering all the stuff required by the ACA to be offered.

The law states that policies are grandfathered in if there were agreed to before the ACA was passed.

The insurance companies are just taking advantage of people, as is their God given right in a capitalist economy.

And are you pretending the ACA did anything to actually reduce costs are help resolve the problem you're talking about?

Changing the subject is a sign of cognitive dissonance in action.

Re:Personal responsibility

[quantaman]

The thing is uninsured were already being treated and paid for, but they were doing it in emergency rooms so it was very inefficient and the insured were picking up the tab. A broken leg is one thing, but what if a young uninsured person gets cancer? It's very probable that they won't have the money to pay so what's your solution?

As for the passage, it was a specific Republican strategy to oppose any Democratic attempt at healthcare reform because passage, specifically bipartisan passage, would be seen as an accomplishment by Obama. Through consistent opposition they were able to make the bill highly unpopular and win more seats. But the cost was they ended up having almost no say on a major piece of legislation.

Belief big gov will save us from ourselves ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stockholm syndrome, or capture–bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.

Oh mortal coil !
Superman where are you !
Deliver unto us a morsel of promise
lest we starve in the desert of our own creation
and we shall serve under you as king !

Perhaps we should add "A Clockwork Orange" into Common Core.

Noam Chomsky Illegitimate Authority

Re:No. Toni Townes-Whitley

[Anonymous Coward]

Is she the sister-wife?

Warm and Fuzzy

[Anonymous Coward]

Cant manage a website but you trust them to manage ~1/7th of the US economy.

The ACA isa 3 yrs. old, $600,000,000 retarded baby

[Anonymous Coward]

some personnel needed for the effort were furloughed because of the shutdown

Nice partisan swipe, but the govt had three years and $600 million to make this work. The shutdown was a non-factor.

2572 pages of juicy law - new scandals coming.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the DEMS read the obamacare bill ? Ask Nancy Pelosi D-CA ?
2,572 pages of obamacare law will generate over 11,000 pages of new laws.
Try reading 3 pages of contract law and watch your head spin.

I blame the democrats. You can argue you can blame both parties.
I blame the Liberal media for hyjacking the tea party and giving it to the REPUBS.
A vote for an independent seems to be a vote for DEMS.

I predict this will be better than the housing crisis - more fraud than ever. Except this time you do not loose your house you may loose your health or life.

I personally believe the LIB media does not ask the correct questions. CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, NYTIMES, CNBC. They do not ask the right questions. For example, CNN did a segment this past week on several reasons why there was biased in reporting on Obamacare. CNN was telling you they are biased and gave you their ENLIGHTENED answer why you should believe it.

Sorry LIB media, I do not believe your HALF TRUTHS, Partial stories, deception by reporting. I do not buy your products or support your sponsors.

Here's how to fix that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Join the Mafia, work as a hit man for a couple years, and get into the Witness Protection Plan.

Monty Pytheon

[stackOVFL]

I got to the part where the gov shutdown took place. All the comments were of some form of "well the folks that ran that have been furloughed..." I found myself think of the opening credits to The Holy Grail: We apologies for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible have been sacked." We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

Haha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your list sounds like an awesome lineup at the next Coachella!

Easier to be an independent worker

[Anonymous Coward]

It will actually be easier to be an independent worker. Health insurance was just priced out of most independent workers' reach. One of the benefits of the ACA is that it will allow more people to try working independently, since they will no longer be tied to a company to get insurance at a reasonable price.

Re:Easier to be an independent worker

[sumdumass]

10% or more of your yearly income is not a reasonable price. That is what the highest level of income the subsidies are supposed to compensate to if you qualify for them. Except that you won't get subsidies working independently because your income will reflect a lot more than just wages being your own business.

The way the law is written, any employer portion of coverage is not taxed to the employee. Or to put it more simple, the employer's contributions to health coverage does not count as income unless you are the employer then all your expense is considered income. Now, if that portion or any qualified health care expense exceeds either 7.5% or 14% of your income, then the portion in excess can be deducted but you have to itemize which may reduce other benefits as well.

Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

"There are smart asses, and grand parents running e-commerce sites more complex than the ACA."

Have you ever worked in IT? What you are saying indicates that you have not clue about what you're talking about. The complexity of a system like this is huge, and even more if you consider the interaction with other systems, plus the scale of resources required.

I don't have enough information to tell if the development of this system was adequate to the requirements, but your comments are preposterous and completely out of base.

Random comments (mostly out of context)

[Anonymous Coward]

Remedy Access - Working on remedy access for Agent-broker helpdesk- may be up by end of day

Oh god no...

*Landscape update- Downloadable Excel files now available

Nooo!!!

Natalie is working as Alissa's _special_ assistant

Hellz yea!!

But do URLs need state approval?

Yes comrade all URLs require state approval.

Consumer access issues- 40,000 people in the waiting room.

Must be a pretty big room.

Landscapes- Why were ID and NM not included in the Landscape?

Your the one using Excel...you tell us.

We haven't been able to test to see if they appear as $0 premium plans in Plan Compare, but they do show up as $0 premium plans in the Landscape.

SOLD..!!

What should Lisa Ann tell these folks?

It's free!!

Carlos to report back on CGI support for ticket adjudication for War Room tomorrow.

Lets hope Carlos is not also using Remedy.

Alissa and Mike to take NH elective abortion for 2014

Oh dear Alissa should have stuck with Natalie.

Do we have NM and ID state liaisons?

Not anymore they are still mad at you for leaving them out of the landscape.

So as more people enter the system, more people will see those errors.

Sounds like a plan.

Stereotypes

[Anonymous Coward]

Be careful there. That's pretty offensive.

The Bomb

[bussdriver]

Don't forget how Hitler split up his nuclear bomb team and isolated them from each other divided resources to foster "competition" in an effort to apply business think to science; as if everything works like the "free market."

Oblig.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

Re:High Tax sycophants

[DocSavage64109]

It's called Reagonomics. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

blame it on

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama

Issa is not legitimate

[bussdriver]

Anybody following that fanatic knows better than to trust him as a source without double checking (which one should do with any politician, especially those who are also lawyers.) It's illogical to claim it's can't be a crazy conspiracy theory simply because the "crisis" was horrific to somebody.

Embassy attacks and deaths happen; it's just the way things have been for decades, nothing new. Bush had dozens of them, Clinton had some big high profile ones, Reagan, Carter, etc. They don't usually kill higher-level officials in these attacks so that makes it a little different but it really don't matter a whole lot; those officials are no more important than the underlings we never remember... and we'd not remember this one if it wasn't exploited for political grandstanding (especially during a big campaign season.) More security may not have made a difference... in which case, we'd be in the same situation we are in today; people covering their asses with others demanding perfection and "accountability."

All congress does these days is grandstanding which is why their approval is so high... that is, higher than Castro but lower than Cancer in approval.

H1B Visas

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help but wonder how many H1B visas were hired to do this work to screw over Americans.

Red States Got What They Deserved

[Tablizer]

Although these problems are bound to occur in any large organization, their impact is disproportionately large when a monopolist power screws up.

Distributing the complexity to states would also help, as we have seen.

The authors of the bill assumed that most if not all states would build their own sites, shrinking the burden of the central fed site. States that did build their own are overall in better shape than states that let the feds handle their exchange.

The large federal site is largely due to GOP stubbornness and obstructionism. The red states got what they deserved.

And it's a big-ass irony for the alleged "states rights" GOP.

BOTH parties need a big spank on this. Toss the incumbents and zealots in the next election.

lies they tell the foot soldiers

[Anonymous Coward]

Medical malpractice is a large cost. Unpaid emergency care is a large cost. Preventative care lowers cost significantly. ACA will lower costs. Millions won't lose their current plans. The US isn't first in the world in health care related life expectancy (it is as soon as you stop counting violent/accidental deaths and obesity related deaths).

Keep parroting this stuff, it really helps fix our problems.

A serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Yesterday, there were people who were in real pain, and who were dying (like in death) cause they couldn't afford medical care, or even the 5 bucks for bus fare.
today, there are people who are not in pain, and not dying thanks to obamacare

so, stipulating to all the lies and mis information (if you think lie is to strong, google krugman hannity, PKs citing some reporter on hannity lies)
there are people who are not dying

and that is a lot more important then all the rest of this crap

not panic, but people fixing bugs

[cinnamon colbert]

jeezum, didn't *anyone* actually read the pdf files ?
I looked at em, and the majority are what you expect - people methodically going thru punch lists and bug reports and fixes
perfectly norma
but no, the media+obamahaters have to make a big deal of it
just once, I'd like one of you obamahaters to acknowlede a FACT
today, there are people who are much better off thanks to PPACA - teenagers with leukemia, people with pre existing conditions, etc

and as for all the media BS about canceled policys - its clear that most of those policys weren't what you wold call "health insurance" eg policys that pay 100 dollars a day if hospitalized...those are like matilda's dad the used car sales man policys

my modest proposal

[almechist]

The US Government can simply take more money from taxpayers, then borrow 40 cents from China for every dollar, and they will make ACA succeed by brute-force.

Uh, isn't that basically just socialism, plus the fact that people want more than what they can afford? They could just spend less on healthcare and get the same result without the borrowing. However, the whole point of socialism is to take money from people who have money and to spend it on people who don't. If you don't like that then the solution is to just let people who can't afford insurance die, which most would not consider an acceptable solution.

The problem with healthcare is that everybody wants to paint it like some black-and-white simple problem with a simple solution, when in reality it is about 500 problems lumped into one big mess. There are lots of issues that drive up costs. There are lots of issues that discourage preventative care. There are lots of issues with who gets cared for. There are lots of administrative issues with paying a fair price for the work that gets done. There are lots of issues with trying to figure out what the best way to take care of a sick person actually is.

Everybody like to just pick one thing and point out a simple solution to it. Just let ERs turn away the indigent and now hospitals are solvent (just be sure to budget more money for the morgue, both for those who can't afford care and also for those who left their wallets at home when they keeled over). Just set the reimbursement rate for a particular treatment at $10 and now it doesn't cost much to pay for it (ignore the fact that nobody will provide the treatment any longer). Let the market freely set prices (and ignore the fact that consumers have little ability to shop around while unconscious). Every complicated problem has a simple solution that won't work...

OK, here's my simple solution. Expand Medicare to cover everyone. Do it in increments, slowly adding younger and younger people, reducing the eligibility age by 10 every 2 years. Eventually - probably pretty soon, actually - you start adding people who haven't payed enough into the system to pay for their care, so you need an outside revenue source. I see one obvious option that doesn't involve a major tax increase or even a spending decrease, and which has many serendipitous side benefits as well: end the drug war and legalize and tax all recreational drugs, with the tax revenue earmarked specifically and exclusively for the new medicare.

There, problem solved!

Seriously, though, my answer to those raving against government bureaucrats running and ruining our health care system is simply to point to Medicare, which has been working fairly well for a long time, and is well liked by those who rely on it. There is no reason Medicare couldn't be expanded, eventually becoming the single-payer system we so badly need.

Re:my modest proposal

[Rich0]

I've thought the same thing. Medicare does need some work though:

1. It really needs to be comprehensive, without a patch-work of coverage for hospitalization vs preventative care vs drugs, supplemental insurance, etc.
2. The cost problem still needs work. Otherwise level of care will have to drop as all those people you plan to add to Medicare are already paying for it and just not getting benefits, so giving them benefits will cost a LOT of money. US healthcare costs are WAY higher than anywhere else.

But, sure, there is no reason it couldn't be expanded.

This isn't a democratic / republican debate

[Anonymous Coward]

This is about money, and how to make more of it off of the hands of the middle class. The insurance companies (whos CEO's many would believe are republicans) all want this. It is a guaranteed monopoly. Most of the health care costs in the USA do not go to doctors. They go toward the medical infrastructure e.g. The insurance companies, malpractice lawyers, office attendants, medical billing specialists, and AMA (who's job is to create barriers to entry and manufacture artificial scarcity). Health care is too expensive. It wasn't 50 years ago. What has changed. If President Obama were to really want to tackle the disaster the is health care in the USA he would be asking how can we go back to the system we had 50 years ago. Instead he has given the Insurance agencies (republicans) license to make additional billions in an effort to somehow create equality. There is no such thing as equality. The rich will always have it better than the poor. Conservative values (not republicans) want to make everyone rich. The Obama care plan wants to make the rich (insurance companies) even richer at the expense of the poor. The Republicans want traditional values so that the rich can make more money. The democrats want to help everyone so that the slum lords (the rich) to make more money through section 8 housing so that they can get those filthy homeless people off the streets. It is rich vs. poor with out a fuck being given to morals and character.

Of coarse the media (the rich) will ignore this obvious fact and instead continue to create this false dichotomy because they are rich and have a vested interest in the status quo.

Re:Darrell 'Fraud' Issa (Cherry Picking?)

[Tablizer]

Interesting you bring up Issa's credibility. Here's an article suggesting Issa may be cherry-picking document releases to mislead:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/08/house-dem-accuses-issa-of-selectively-leaking-obamacare-documents

Do you REALLY want these people in charge of your

[bgalbrecht]

And this is this typical anti-Obamacare response based on misrepresentation of how Obamacare works. Obamacare is basically two things: a private insurance exchange that has specific rules about what is covered and a medicaid program that subsidizes the premiums. The only people who are deciding whether or not your mother can have surgery are employees of the insurance company your mother chooses. That's right, the so-called death panels are run by a bunch of private for-profit (or sometimes not-for-profit) insurance actuaries. And even those not-for-profit insurance companies don't do losses unless they want to go out of business.

Sure, some people signing up in the exchange might end up being told that they qualified for subsidies when they should have, and will have to refund some or all of their subsidies. But your definition of "routinely" is bogus. I'm quite sure that it doesn't mean, at least 50% of benefits are calculated incorrectly, probably something like .1%-.3% are calculated incorrectly. If you have a hundred thousand SSA beneficiaries with incorrect benefits, it sounds like a huge problem, but when it's put in the perspective of .2% of 55 million recipients, it doesn't have the same impact.

Even though healthcare.gov is a government program, most of the development work was not done by government employees, it was done by a bunch of government contractors following the requirements of a bunch of political appointees who were in over their heads. People like your wife's coworkers aren't the ones setting up these systems, they're not the cause of the initial fiasco, they're not the ones on the death march to fix the problems. They're just shuffling the paperwork once the process is set up. And the paperwork they're shuffling has nothing to do with medical decisions whatsoever, it's just deciding whether somebody is going to have to pay full price for their insurance or if the government is subsidizing it.

I probably should have posted this anonymously like you did so I could mod you down, because your post isn't insightful at all. If Obamacare was a national healthcare system like the UK NIH you might have had a valid point, but it's not, and the Department of Health and Human Services is not in charge of your healthcare beyond requiring that any health insurance sold in the exchanges has to provide coverage for specific procedures and have specific out of pocket maximums. They're not even responsible for the insurance companies cancelling the existing policies that don't meet their requirements for the exchanges.

Oh, come now

[dfenstrate]

I don't have to 'know the true dogma' to call out a probable liar. If you're not a liar, the line you used has been widely employed by liars, making it a self-defeating thing to say. See Seminar Caller.

Re:Oh, come now

[luis_a_espinal]

I don't have to 'know the true dogma' to call out a probable liar. If you're not a liar, the line you used has been widely employed by liars, making it a self-defeating thing to say. See Seminar Caller.

So, let me see, either I'm a probable liar (as you claimed now), or I'm a definite leftist (as you originally stated.) Either way you have not given any proof of it other than making the claim (as Colbert once said "I cannot prove it, but I can say it.")

And you do need to know the "dogma", for you are using something to measure my alleged leftiness (and/or ability to lie.)

the line you used has been widely employed by liars, making it a self-defeating thing to say. See Seminar Caller. [wikipedia.org]

And this is a perfect example of circular reasoning and guilt-by-association. You took a general form of speech (yes, general) that I happen to use, and because it matched something described in wikipedia, and voila, guilty!!!

What's next, a "No True Scottsman" claim? I'm not going to debate you on whether I'm a liar or a leftie or a false-RINO, or, I dunno, a Klingon. Whatever the fuck gives you comfort and mental stability in that political corner of yours.