Slashdot Mirror
Officials Say HealthCare.gov Site Now Performing Well
The much-discussed health care finance sign-up website HealthCare.gov has benefited from the flurry of improvements that have been thrown at it in the last several weeks. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid spokesman Aaron Albright told Fox News Saturday that "[w]ith the scheduled upgrades last night and tonight, we're on track to meet our stated goal for the site to work for the vast majority of users." CMM spokeswoman Julie Bataille. "said the installation of new servers Friday night helped improved the response times and error rates, even with heavier-than-usual weekend traffic." If you've used the site this weekend, what has your experience been like?
To test it, they want you to put in all kinds of personal information. No thanks.
*crickets*
I'm unemployed and without insurance. If I go to the dentist's office to get a small no-anesthesia filling, as I did last week, they will accept $116 from an insurance company but will charge me $167 for exactly the same procedure because I'm a cash payer. When an insurance company pays them, they deduct the difference between $167 and $116 as a "loss" to reduce their taxes. Obviously, they've got quite an incentive to do that.
It's not just dentist's offices. Those are the shenanigans going on with tens of thousands of health care providers across the US, it's to the tune of tens of billions of dollars of "losses" pulled out of thin air, and it has to fixed before any of this is going to improve. Subsidizing private insurance companies with taxpayer money and mandating that people sign up with them while allowing insurance companies to keep skimming profits out of the system and penalizing cash-payers is the wrong thing to do.
BOSS: Our mandate is to make this site work for the vast majority of users in two weeks. Otherwise we don't get a bonus. And by "we" I mean "I". ... well, I just thought you could hire a few competent engineers for a change. That might get the job done.
ENGINEER ERNIE: But there are millions of users! Right now the site can only handle 200 simultaneous users, and we just don't have the hardware for more. If we work our asses off and spend a bunch of money on servers, we might be able to get it up to ten thousand. That's nowhere near the vast majority.
BOSS: Damn it, I promised my son I'd buy him a Cessna for his birthday. I need that bonus! You guys had better think of something quickly.
ENGINEER DAVE: I think I have an idea...
BOSS: Spit it out, man!
ENGINEER DAVE:
BOSS: Look, I tried that. It was nixed by the big shots -- they don't want to develop a reputation for competence, okay? You've gotta figure something out that works with our current human capital.
ENGINEER ERNIE: Uh, I have an idea. Say again what the mandate was?
BOSS: We have to make the site work for the vast majority of users in two weeks.
ENGINEER ERNIE: That's what I thought. So if we just drive away all the users right now, then we will have no users in two weeks, right?
BOSS: Yeah... how does that help?
ENGINEER ERNIE: Well, what's the vast majority of zero?
[Silence]
ENGINEER DAVE: But... but...
BOSS: Shut up and start sabotaging the code, or you're fired.
ENGINEERS: Yes, sir!
Zippy and responsive. Each page was uncluttered, and what little info I had to give to "see plans in my area" was reasonable. I got back a dozen quotes in under a minute just clicking through things.
Now, the actual registration process is probably more complex, but if the rest of the website responds as beautifully as it did for me during those dozen screens I saw, then they really did a good job fixing it.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Canada has more health care than Americans do, and they're not slaves.
Are you completely sure that health care is slavery?
there's no such thing as something cheaper than mandatory insurance
anyone who doesn't get insurance is someone who thinks they don't need insurance. while those who get insurance really need it. so costs are spread amongst fewer people and they go up, if you respect the "freedom" of some freeloaders to be stupid and irresponsible
then those assholes without insurance break their arm and get sick anyway, and then they avoid the bill because they can't afford it, and the taxpayer has to bail out the hospital
so you pay for it anyway, in the most wasteful, stupid way possible, and you pay for irresponsible freeloaders
that's why healthcare is such a joke in the usa and is so incredibly expensive
now forcing 50 year old to buy childbirth insurance does sound crazy so you fix that specific problem, you don't jettison the entire superior idea
any questions?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Basically all accounts created in the first week ten days must be abandoned and fresh account created. If you try to continue with the old account, it would retrieve an old incomplete corrupt data file and you are screwed. But start a new account, new email id, and it would be a breeze for most people. If you want to check your subsidy etc I heard there were trouble. Also heard that most troubled were older people unfamiliar with internet and web pages and were intimidated by all the new fangled terms and legalese.
Two days back got an email saying, "why don't you try again?". I logged in opened a chat window and asked "williams" to cancel that account. He said dont bother it will time out and die by itself.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
And those younger women are paying for old people's heart attacks. The old people are paying to prevent flu epidemics from getting younger males sick. And men tend to have a part in making babies and it is much cheaper to pay for IUDs and pills than kids. Especially unplanned ones.
Yes, I have a question. Why is insurance on the exchange so much more expensive for so many people, than what they were paying before the law went into effect? If they were paying for freeloaders both before and after, why the huge difference?
Oh stop it. You can go off into the wilds and stay away from the IRS, UPS, AT&T and likely the NSA. Very, very few people stay completely off the grid. If you want to have the benefits of civilization, then you have to pay for it. That said, the ACA isn't going to help (or hurt much), the entire system is screwed up six ways from Sunday, but if you want to have any chance of reasonable rates you have to spread the costs as far and as wide a possible.
Perhaps there should be a way to opt out - you sign a form (and get branded, RFID'ed, tatooed or whatever) and you don't get to go to the ER. You don't get Police or Fire protection. You don't get mail. You can live your life in whatever rugged fantasy world you create for yourself. Goodluckwiththat.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Watching the home page load, this shows up:
[17:06:07.510] GET https://stats.g.doubleclick.net/dc.js [HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified 40ms]
[17:06:06.192] GET https://cdn.optimizely.com/js/166688199.js [HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified 40ms]
Hm.
So I'm in the process of trying to sign up for healthcare.gov. I'm already having problems, because it won't accept my e-mail address as my username, even though it would appear to fit the criteria.
"The username is case sensitive. Choose a username that is 6-74 characters long and must contain a lowercase or capital letter, a number, or one of these symbols _.@/-"
If they are having problems explaining the most basic things, I'm not hopeful.
The site is also less secure for me because none of my standard, extremely secure, never before had a problem with them passwords will work for it. That will force me to write it down, making the site inherently less secure.
5 Minutes later...
LOL. What an absolute piece of garbage of a web site. I tried to change my username to just the username of my email address and the site says it's invalid. It should be valid based on the instructions, but no joy. If they actually want the username to contain a number, then that's a joke; it's something I've never seen before on ANY website EVER.
WHO LAID OUT THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THIS SITE? JOE BIDEN? HAVE THEY NEVER EVEN USED THE INTERNET?
When sites come up with new, unusual standards for usernames and passwords (e.g. must contain a %, *, or ^), then they are making the site less secure because they are increasing the odds that people will have to write down their usernames and passwords.
Because previously, those "cheap" plans covered almost nothing and were pure profit for insurance companies:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Wire/2013/1029/Millions-losing-health-plans-under-Obamacare.-Did-president-mislead-video
People are now paying for coverage they should have been previously receiving.
Not only does every first world country other than the US have some sort of universal healthcare/single payer system, the US spends more than every other country for healthcare for a lower level of care/poor outcomes.
USA! USA!
That's not true. At least not in my case. I was paying $165 for a better than platinum level plan. My new option for slightly worse coverage now costs $451. But I suppose you're right. I now have maternity coverage, and can get free birth control pills.
Young, rich, healthy people pay more so that the old, the poor, and the sick can get affordable coverage. Maybe you don't like that right now, but you'll change your mind if you ever get seriously ill, or lose your job, or see your retirement savings vanish into Wall Street's coffers. And if none of those things happen, then count yourself blessed and move on.
The main reason the premiums of those health insurance policies cost less is that they were bad policies. They didn't cover you for some of the problems you would be most likely to have, and when they did cover you, you wind up with enormous deductibles, co-payments and exclusions.
In the insurance industry, they used to call them "herd of buffaloes" policy. They only cover you if you get run over by a herd of buffaloes, and then only if it's on Main Street, and only if it's at noon.
But actually, most people will pay lower premiums for equal or better insurance, and most of the Obamacare horror stories aren't true. http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/
Oh stop it. You can go off into the wilds and stay away from the IRS, UPS, AT&T and likely the NSA. Very, very few people stay completely off the grid. If you want to have the benefits of civilization, then you have to pay for it.
Or as Adam Smith said, those who benefit from society have an obligation to pay for the costs of running society.
I think much of the opposition to health insurance reform is because the costs to treat the uninsured are hidden. People who receive health care and do not have money or insurance cost hospitals (and patients and shareholders) a lot of money. When they pass these costs on, I think the hospitals should be required to break out these costs as separate line items on the bills they send to their patients and the insurance companies. I feel people would be much less opposed to health insurance reform when they see exactly how much they are paying to treat the uninsured. I do not think a civilized person can think "let them die in the streets" to be an option.
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
Are you completely sure that health care is slavery?
War is peace.
Ignorance is strength.
Which of these other countries do you speak of that I would have gotten better treatment or a better outcome?
In any modern developed country other than the US, you would have gotten similar treatment and since we know you responded well to treatment, you'd have the same outcome. Obviously you can't get a better outcome than successful treatment.
For people without insurance, of course, the outcomes are often vastly different because in the US that means they'll likely have to delay treatment.
At least not in my case. I was paying $165 for a better than platinum level plan.
Were you paying the entire bill for that plan? Did you have a large deductible? Most people that get health insurance have a major portion of the tab picked up by their employer. They think they pay $165 or whatever their price is because they never see the actual full cost of the plan. I've spent a LOT of time looking at health insurance plans in recent years. I have NEVER seen anyone get a plan with that much in the way of features for that kind of price unless they were paying a huge deductible. I had a catastrophic coverage plan a few years ago that had a $5000 deductible but had pretty good coverage after that and the price was around $150/month. But that first $5000 was entirely on me.
I run a manufacturing company. We provide health insurance for our employees and have picked up 50% of the cost. Our group rate for a pretty good 80/20 HMO with a zero deductible (roughly equivalent to a gold plan) cost about $525 per employee per month. Net cost to our employees is around $260/month since the company pays half. The plans we've found under the new regulations for the Affordable Care Act will give similar coverage for about $200-300/month (varies with age but always a lot less than current cost) or almost a 40% reduction in total premium over what we pay now. Furthermore a lot of our employees will qualify for subsidies so the coverage will cost even less.
While this whole roll out has been a fiasco, at the end of the day the people who work for me are mostly going to end up with similar or better coverage for less money. Furthermore their coverage will not be tied to their employment with us which is LONG overdue. No one should EVER lose health coverage just because they lost a job.
Not to mention the 20% or so that have no coverage at all.
Private healthcare FTW!!
Young people are the poorest age group. Middle aged and older people are the wealthiest age groups. Why should relatively poor young folks continue to pay more and more and more to subsidize their relatively rich elders?
What you say is anecdotal evidence. Insurance is based on statistics and actuarials. There is 50% chance you would have ended up bankrupt if you actually had to file medical claims. Have you filed substantial claims exceeding the premium any year? Was it paid without hassle?
More than half of the people who ended up bankrupt because of medical costs, had health insurance and thought they would be covered. But when they file the claims the fine print demon strikes back and they are left holding huge bills.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
And the same attitude led to an AIDS pandemic.
"If you can't afford to buy health care, don't breed"
I think you mean "don't be born".
The insurance companies knew the grandfathering, so they very carefully moved people out of their grandfathered plans in 2011, 12 and 13. There is a class action lawsuit in California now, about policy holders claiming that they were not told they are losing the grandfathered protection status by changing policies in 2011, 12 and 13 by these insurance companies.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/health-care-costs-_n_3998425.html
http://kff.org/health-costs/
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/10/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries.html
I'm glad you base your outlook on your anecdotal evidence. You're part of the problem.
that's one smart bloodworm.
Citing a Salon article that exposes Fox News? Pot, meet kettle...
You know how we could have avoided all this mess?
Single-payer health care.
Instead we're implementing a Plan B that Republicans have been actively working against at both the State and Federal levels.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
you aren't immune to sickness and accidents
if you don't get insurance, and break your arm, you avoid the bill because you can't pay it, or you declare bankruptcy
and that makes you an irresponsible freeloader, because the rest of us have to bail out the hospital for unpaid bills with our taxes
insurance rates should be, and are, graded according to risk, like life insurance or car insurance, so chill out and get your health insurance
unless you are telling us your real motivation is to be an irresponsible freeloader, and avoid your hospital bill if you get hurt or sick
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Really?
because 12k is a credible amount of debt to get paid down.
Yeah, it'd suck to have to pay it off, but you don't need to do it all at once (in practice you get treated then start slowly paying, whatever things state).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Fudging the numbers a little? The opm site rates in DC for basic self is 200$ biweekly. For high family coverage it is 450$ from employee, another 450$ from the employer. Per pay period. There are 24 pay periods. The total premium works out to, surprise!, 21600$.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Slavery. Good one.
If you don't want to participate in this society, don't. Sure, none of the civilized countries in Europe will take you, but maybe you can get into Rwanda. Then you can see firsthand what actual slavery looks like.
I do not think a civilized person can think "let them die in the streets" to be an option.
CNN's 2012 GOP Presidential Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yva0VSN1_T4&t=41s
Wolf Blitzer: Congressman [Ron Paul], are you saying that society should just let him die? ::laughter::
Audience: Yeah!
Ron Paul: No.
Audience: YEAH!
Audience:
Ron Paul: I practiced medicine, ummm, before we had medicaid in the early 1960s, when I got out of medical school.
I practiced in Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio and the churches took care of them.
The audience members didn't have to dissemble like Ron Paul did.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Damn straight you should count yourself lucky.
There are seriously terrible things out there. Cancer. Parkinson's. MS. But do go on. Complain about paying more than your share, you always-healthy person, with your great genes, with your great personal character and intelligence that have kept you away from drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, with your even temperament that has shielded you from depression. Complain, with your good job, where you aren't exposed to toxins, which pays for your good house in your nice neighborhood, where gang violence is the farthest thing from your mind, where you have a great grocery store that enables your fully organic diet, where you have a great gym just up the road that you work out at five days a week.
The whole point of insurance is that we all get screwed a little, so that when someone gets really fucking boned, they don't get screwed sideways on top of it. Even a perfect person like you can fall off a bike or get hit by a car.
Of course, you're also right. We're all getting screwed way more than we should because we didn't have balls to say to hell with wall street and insist on a single-payer system.
I'm neither defending nor criticizing the president, but that statement was clearly a bit of hyperbole, and you'd have to be an idiot to take it at face value. Why do I say that?
1) The statement was made about plans that existed prior to the ACA going into effect
2) One of the major problems that the ACA was created to address was the fact that insurance companies could (and routinely did) cancel people's policies for any reason at all.
3) Laws cannot be made to retroactively force people/companies to do something.
So I think the point was, there was nothing in the law that could cause you to lose the coverage you had. However, there was no way to prevent insurance companies from cancelling policies on their own whim before the ACA went into effect.
I had a non-group plan that just got canx. It cost me $15 a month, covered every known and unknown med procedure with no deductible or co-pay. Now my premiums have gone up to $256 a month because of all the Obama dick sucking morons. Or maybe I'm lying just to make sure the Tea Party can continue partying for another few years. Hope this post helps.
There is also no constitutional right to social security, roads, clean water, safe food, or any of dozens of other things we, as a society, consider important. You mention taxes, do you think we should go back to the tax structure the United States had in the 1950s and 1960s?
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
if you don't get insurance, and break your arm, you avoid the bill because you can't pay it, or you declare bankruptcy
It's called putting money aside each month and saving for a rainy day instead of always eating out, always buying the latest gadgets and living high on the hog while expecting that other people will cover your ass in a jam or as I like to put it, "Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."
They're called appropriations bills and they're freely available online.
Sounds like bad insurance. We just had a kid and paid $100 plus $100/day for the hospital. Came to $400 total. We've spent more than that on pictures in two years. And my insurance isn't even all that good. My previous company's was much, much better.
I don't know, but it works for me.
most people live paycheck-to-paycheck. most people can't put away $100,000 for the cancer treatment
what most people do is get insurance, as this is the most financially responsible and intelligent thing to do, and your plan in your comment is bonkers and not financially responsible nor intelligent
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
>That's called something else that was tried numerous times in the 20th century and proven a failure.
the american system is a failure. we pay ridiculous multiples as compared to other countries with universal healthcare/ mandatory insurance, and we have lower quality of care than them
what you call a failure has been proven to be a success in all of our social and economic peers
this is where you trot out out horror stories from countries with socialized medicine. as if the american model has no horror stories, including avoiding the doctor until it is too late because you can't afford him
socialized medicine is not perfect. it's just a hell of a lot better than the american joke of a system
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In the USA we spend 8100 dollars per person in the USA for healthcare. Simple solution to save a lot of overhead money right off the top, one insurance for everyone that covers all needs paid on a sliding scale for anyone with under 100,000 income per family they pay one price. Everyone for 100,000 to 300,000 they pay another price, everyone with income over that gets screwed.
That will dramatically right out of the gate reduce costs of healthcare since we spend nearly 30% on ADMINISTRATION. That is approximately 2733 of that 8200 dollars on overhead a large part of that is the INSURANCE COMPANIES!
"An update of that analysis more than a decade later, after the diffusion of managed care and the widespread adoption of computerization, found that administration constituted some 30 percent of U.S. health-care costs and that the share of the health-care labor force comprising administrative (as opposed to care delivery) workers had grown 50 percent to constitute more than one of every four health-sector employees." --business week
That's 1/3 less.
Next offer free school for doctors in exchange for set prices on healthcare services for doctors that have above a 3.5 out of 4 average in college. That will greatly reduce the costs of services.
Next put a cap on prices paid for hospital equipment. One buyer for all equipment buying in bulk and distributing it throughout the USA to hospitals and doctors offices. Equipment prices paid in the USA is crazy higher than other countries. That will save a ton of money.
Next setup flat tax rate on all US sales no exceptions if you sell it in the USA you pay taxes on it simple as that across the board for everyone, kill the rest and that will save a ton of money on taxmen.
Next stop fighting costly wars that we can't have a hope to win. That will save future 14 trillions paid and huge healthcare costs.
That is just a start.... b52
We have the best doctors in the world, so I'm not sure how any of those countries could be *better*.
I would rather be seen by an average doctor early in my illness instead of a superstar doctor late into it.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I see you don't have an understanding of the difficulties of a healthcare system, and somehow think that if you have a good attitude, everything will be alright.
With that viewpoint, you'll make it far in an imaginary world.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
...now that the site works, does that mean that the law isn't flawed? Or are the people who made that argument just going to backtrack now?
what about police services?
do we have to do a financial means test before cops answer 911?
what about fire services?
do we have to a financial means test before the firemen turn on the hose?
healthcare is same necessary fundamental service, where no questions are asked and response is automatic
therefore it must be paid for in the same way as police and fire, and understood in the same way: a fundamental necessary government service, the way it is all of our economic and social peers (who pay fractions of our healthcare rates, because their policy matches the reality of what healthcare is)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Citing a Salon article that exposes Fox News? Pot, meet kettle...
Really? Salon certainly has a liberal slant, but Fox News regularly misleads its viewers and employs complete nutjobs as contributors. Maybe you could compare Salon to the WSJ but the only Liberalish news org I could think to compare Fox to is the Health section at the Huffington Post.
I stole this Sig
Gawd, the amount of Obama boot licking going in that post is unbelievable.
You guy lied. He lied deliberately. Democrats believed it and supported the law. Now, you say only idiots believed it. Well, that just happens to be the Democrats in Congress.
Yes, yes, yes, how could I be so blind??? Romneycare GOOD, Obamacare BAD. I see the LIGHT!!!!
You do realise, don't you, that Obamacare IS Romneycare with some more of the 'gotchas' removed?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
This is a good idea, but it touches on one of the main problems with the whole US healthcare system: that the costs in general are wildly high and not anchored to reality. e.g. $15 for administering a Tylenol to a hospital patient, $25 for an alcohol cotton swab, etc. Clearly that's not what those items cost, so what are what are we really paying for? Yes, they could add an "uninsured persons supplement" to the bill, but it would get lost in the shit storm of crazy prices already on there.
In case you think I'm pulling numbers out of my ass, here's how the OECD see things: http://madvilletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Health-Care-GDP-OECD-1980-2012.jpg
My opinion is that America isn't ready for nationalised healthcare. Trying to implement it is like using a bandaid to treat cancer. The first step is to disentangle those costs and make them transparent. Clearly there's wastage and corruption somewhere in the healthcare pipeline. That needs to be regulated down to sane levels. Then, after that's been done, we can worry about some form of nationalisation/socialisation. The system will never be perfect, but the current US system has a lot of room for improvement.
soylentnews.org
I mean, I know we don't live in a particularly nice society. Heck, I just read an article about how much we distrust one another in the US. The fact is that society functions better if we try to take care of each other. Dog eat dog fails in the long term.
Yeah, I get it. Some of you are paying more now. But how is that any different than paying more in taxes for road construction or schools? You may never drive on those roads or send children to those schools. However, you are investing in the infrastructure of our society. Likewise, with the healthcare, you are investing in the people that make this society possible. Investing in people means less sick people, less defaulting on loans (by those sick people), and ultimately, lower costs for all goods because labor becomes a bit cheaper by virtue of fewer sick people.
For those of us that support the ACA, we're fighting against shortsightedness. This is better for society, period. Still, even if you are such a monster that can't see past your own wallet, this will benefit you directly. Albeit, in small ways that will never be the least bit obvious.