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Oregon Signs Up Just 44 People For Obamacare Despite Spending $300 Million
cold fjord writes "The Washington Examiner reports, 'Oregon ... signed up just 44 people for insurance through November, despite spending more than $300 million on its state-based exchange. The state's exchange had the fewest sign-ups in the nation, according to a new report today by the Department of Health and Human Services. The weak number of sign-ups undercuts two major defenses of Obamacare from its supporters. One defense was that state-based exchanges were performing a lot better than the federal healthcare.gov website servicing 36 states. But Oregon's website problems have forced the state to rely on paper applications to sign up participants. Another defense of the Obama administration has attributed the troubled rollout of Obamacare to the obstruction of Republican governors who wanted to see the law fail as well as a lack of funding. But Oregon is a Democratic state that embraced Obamacare early and enthusiastically.'"
Does this really belong on /.? Seriously?
Could have done better by just giving each of those 44 people a couple hundred grand or so. Instead it cost 680k per person.
But what do you REALLY expect from our goverment anymore... Just be glad they didn't roll in ruin your life and shoot your dog i guess.
In the tiered form of American government, states cannot merely be told to do something by the federal government in most cases. This is why highway money is tied to specific road laws (seatbelts, etc), because the federal government has to financially coerce states into action (or losing tax dollars). How the Affordable Care Act doesn't have this coercion, I can only guess.
1. Washington Examiner is one of the MOST extreme right wing political rags in the country.
2. Oregon's web site has not even been online most of the time. It is a total fiasco. Any conclusions on the PPACA based on Oregon are completely ridiculous.
http://news.yahoo.com/oregon-healthcare-exchange-website-never-worked-no-subscribers-130601969--sector.html
3. The situation is NOT representative of what is going on in the rest of the country where signups are increasing at a brisk pace after the improvements on Healthcare.gov.
Mod story -1 stupid.
When you say "One defense was that state-based exchanges were performing a lot better than the federal healthcare.gov website servicing 36 states." and then follow it up with "But Oregon's website problems have forced the state to rely on paper applications to sign up participants." are you actually trying to use one state-run exchange's technical failure to undermine the other states whose exchanges are working just fine?
I ask, because if that IS what you did (and it does appear you did) you need to take a remedial course on logic.
Take a look at the backstory: http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2013/12/oregons_health_exchange_woes_s_1.html
They could have bought insurance for a lot more than 44 people with $300 million.
The weak number of sign-ups undercuts two major defenses of Obamacare from its supporters. One defense was that state-based exchanges were performing a lot better than the federal healthcare.gov website servicing 36 states.
And that defense is accurate. The state-based exchanges are doing well, on average. The only state-based exchanges that are lagging are in Oregon, Maryland, and Nevada. And the latter two are comparable to the federal exchange. Only Oregon is a real disaster.
And furthermore, the point of that defense is to counter the Republicans claiming that the problems of the federal exchange are due to the law being unworkable. The success of the exchanges in New York, New England, Kentucky, California, etc., proves that the law can work.
Just think about it. I used to pay $400/month for insurance, now I pay $73/month. That means that some rich guy is covering the difference. So I like to look at it like the doctor that treats me, and charges me x10 what he should, is actually shooting himself in the foot. And it's all in the name of ...hell if I know.
I just know that rich people get life easy. Seen this story yet?
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Everybody wants obamacare to fail, but for different reasons.
Republicans want it to fail so we can go back to what we had.
Democrats want is to fail to prove that private enterprise can't handle healthcare and we need the government to do it.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/18/the-other-side-of-obamacares-oregon-success-no-one-has-bought-private-insurance/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/20/oregon-obamacare-website_n_4308629.html
The number is so dismal because the Oregon website was worse then the National website. Not because people dont want it as the linked article implies.
Nearly 25,000 individuals and families have so far submitted hard-copy applications, Cox said, with nearly two-thirds of those applicants eligible for Medicaid, a federal-state healthcare plan for the needy.
But none of those applicants has actually been enrolled, with manual processing of the paperwork slowing the process dramatically.
Separately, about 70,000 residents have signed up for Medicaid by responding to letters sent by the state to more than 200,000 people deemed eligible for the program by virtue of their receiving food stamps, Cox said.
Oh wait look who submitted it, cold fjord our resident republi-troll. Hey Cold Fjord... Fuck Off.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
What is it? Still not sure about where I stand on the whole thing, but isn't this meant to be an opinionated reference; possibly an aspersion?
Yeah, this overtly trollish "story" appearing on slashdot is a fucking embarrassment.
Nothing to do with news for nerds. Nothing you wouldn't find on any right-wing extreme blog.
According to the linked pdf, Oregon had 20,617 applications completed. Look at the other states-- this one is going through a cluster-fuck, but liberal California, with its well-designed and fully operational web site, is doing just fine, thank you.
Its obvious from the way it was all designed. They stared... and it quickly became very complicated. And the law makers not wanting to spend the rest of their lives trying to understand something that was very complicated decided to simply reduce everything down to 4 metal themed plans.
Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum.
Not unlike Aristotle's definition of men... which was equally lazy.
And so an adaptable system that could account for literally hundreds of thousands of variables was reduced to a one size fits all system that generally serves everyone poorly.
Everyone.
Not even the poor are well served by this because it harms the healthcare industry itself and especially the healthcare research industry which is responsible for making the next drug or treatment or machine that will in the end... save your life.
This nonsense will see that the drug isn't researched. The treatment isn't developed. The machine isn't made.
Enjoy the free band-aids.
This whole crusade by the Obama administration was madness. Insanity. Giddy cackling lunacy.
And like most things born of madness... it will harm everyone.
This is the problem with the US. It isn't our guns or the money. Its the madness.
This country has a mental health problem.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
But, it's not a widespread commendation of the ACA law. In fact, as noted, there are significant enrollments by paper.
Also, there is a huge crunch on the backend to automate the purchasing process. Surprise, most health insurers are not set up to make it easy for people to purchase health plans online, much less handle large numbers of enrollments. Also, there is a lot of work around the small group marketplaces. The article and summary make it sound like 300 million was spent just on the web site. It's not even close. Granted the web site is just broken and heads are starting to roll.
Oh, and the main contractor for the project was Oracle, so, well, if anybody can make that much disappear they can.
What a pathetic day, when political trolling, with not even a hit of actual technical content, is published as as story on Slashdot. Isn't someone paid to moderate this stuff for substance and relevance?
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Nobody trusts the websites to begin with both in terms of reliability, information availability and security. People I know who've tried the Federal website have been shrugging their shoulders because its navigation sucks and they can get more information from sites like eHealthInsurance.com.
The other problem is for the rest of us in the "insured" category our premiums are going up substantially while existing plans disappear, lose choices of Hospital networks and get wonderful things we don't need anymore (at least at my age..) Maternity care because all the plans have to have it. For all of that I have a new bunch of taxes to subsidize those who can't afford it and my premiums have gone up 225% For that increase I could buy a nice summer home. This isn't the Affordable Care Act it's "you have to do it our way because we say so." Like your current doctor? He's not "In-Network" so we won't cover visits. Like that hospital you've been going to for years? "It's too expensive and we know it's 15 miles closer than the other facility, it's not in your network but you can go there for emergencies since it's the closest to you." The rationing of healthcare has begun and with it you'll pay more (for most of the middle class) and get less. Such a bargain! We should all be signing up on untested websites where you don't know how your information is handled and what they do with the PII you give them.
I can't wait for the midterm elections.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
...like Canada, the US's healthcare isn't mandatory (yet) for everyone who doesn't have a private insurance. (Well, I say "mandatory" but it's not really, but it's pretty much common knowledge for any Canadian citizen to be registered from birth.)
You sir have a fundamental misunderstanding of how insurance works.
I get your drift... but two points: Obamacare actually saves money while insuring more people. (Congressional Budget Office analysis). That's because the current system of treating the poor in emergency rooms is outrageously inefficient. And secondly, doctors are not really rich. They may make more than your or me, but in the overall scheme of things it's hospital administrators, pharmaceutical company CEOs, insurance company owners, and bankers who are really really rich.
The biggest political success for Republicans in the last 30 years was convincing the middle and lower middle class to be afraid of the poor. They should instead be very very afraid of the rich.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
"How's that 'hopey-changey' stuff workin' out for ya?"
Just as many Democrats hate the ACA for being too right-wing as Republicans hate it for being too left-wing. That is the biggest problem with ObamaCare: nobody really supports it except President Obama. Nobody is willing to fight for it. If the Medicare eligibility age had been changed to zero (like it is in all other countries) then that would have had the support of 70% of the American people, and everybody would already have health care. We'd be building more hospitals and clinics because of all the new patients and doctors and clinics would be competing for patients instead of patients competing for health care.
Anyway, the ACA is not going to fix the health care in the US, and US Americans will continue to be sick and obese and infectious as well as famous for that the world over.
It's so obviously flamebait. Kentucky's Exchange site is doing great, btw. Tell me how that figures into your world.
This is fucking Slashdot. Yeah, some big software projects fail. This is fucking news to this crowd???
You don't appear to be familiar with what "proof" actually is...
Once again the abject failure of private companies is blamed on the government, because there are people who are too ideologically head-up-ass to look at the reality of the situation. If privatization was such a boon, all the exchanges would be working incredibly well, and they wouldn't have cost near as much.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
If you want the real scoop, check out what our local newspaper wrote:
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2013/12/oregons_health_exchange_woes_s_1.html
TL;DR: Someone thought control should be handed over to private industry, Oracle was signed up to create the website, they totally screwed it up, and now the website is basically useless and for a long while wasn't even able to sign people up.
So while the public/Democrat finger pointing is good and all (and I don't know who wrote up this summary, they're totally ill informed, outside of Portland Oregon is mostly conversative, in fact here is a map http://bluebook.state.or.us/facts/almanac/almanac10.htm ), it's really that Oracle screwed everyone over. That's the real story, and the state is looking for a way to get their money back.
Oregon was dead last among all states, according to that count. But the tally doesn't include the nearly 100,000 Oregonians who've newly signed up for Medicaid.
If by "rich guy" you mean everyone else with insurance offered by their employer. My same policy went up 44% next year. That is money take directly from my pocket to fund this clusterfuck. I never supported it because I knew the government would totally fuck it up.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
News for Nerds, Stuff that
fuck it
Lol. Proving the facial leftist agenda is more concerned about their power grabbing imagery than the people in actual need of the ideas expressed in their superficial diatribe.
I think you meant "facile"; but ... in a weird way, it still kind of works.
In the short term. "Rich" still pay for all the uninsured who end up in the ER with chronic health problems that would have been caught by a simple checkup earlier on if they're not insured, and without good regulations prices spiral out of control.
The theory (and its only theory, but that's what happens in other countries) is that while cost goes up, it goes up slower with these systems. The only way the rich would pay more long term here is because the law doesn't go far enough.
The biggest political success for Republicans in the last 30 years was convincing the middle and lower middle class to be afraid of the poor. They should instead be very very afraid of the rich.
That reminds me of how the late-19th/early-20th century populist party was smeared. For the (*gasp* fact based) debunking of that smear, see here.
Most of the "signups" are for Medicaid across the country.
Which only proves that the administration is so inept that when they're giving away free healthcare, they can't actually get anyone to sign up.
Obama could f-up an anvil. Jimmy Carter laughs at Obama.
You don't appear to be familiar with what "proof" actually is...
"Confirming" may have been better, Sir Formal Logic. Action speak louder than words and the performance art of fake sign language is a classic example of doing lip-service.
Oregon taxpayers on the hook for this?
No problem. Oregon went for Obama. They broke it they bought it. Live and learn.
I am Jack's writable stack pointer.
Was it when it stopped publishing news that matters?
And they aren't even true democrats - they're champions of big government e.g. republicans in everything but name.
Fifty states of fail.
> "The biggest political success for Republicans in the last 30 years ..."
... maybe 2 or 3 years from now thing could be different, but this is a fiasco ...
...
... NOW ... ]
I'm a political agnostic and I truly find all the tossing of blame around in the Affordable Care Act revolting. Eventually the buck stops somewhere, and any logical person would have to admit that at this point the Affordable Care Act has been rolled out terribly.
Good intentions? Good ideas? No matter what the ideas or intentions are, the results are terrible.
At this point
> Obamacare actually saves money while insuring more people. (Congressional Budget Office analysis). That's because the current system of treating the poor in > emergency rooms is outrageously inefficient.
Right now, I think we are observing entirely new magnitudes of inefficient.
Inefficient is boldly going where inefficient has never gone before
[Hire some freaking Europeans
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
That seems to have more to do with a story about mental illness than anything else. He is an apperant schizophrenic, what's worse is that he had an episode during the speech. If this is true, then chances are that he truly did translate what he percieved. He deserves nothing but sympathy if that is the case, and medical care. Schizophrania can absolutely make someone lose their own sense of where they are in the world, and is an absolute nightmare to endure.
Dude you're hopeless.
you probably could have built it for 1/10th that price.
by going single-payer? /guy from Europe
It's a wonder that this need to be explained, but the logic is dead simple. Healthy people can do work, the sick cannot (or do significantly less of it). If that still baffles anyone as to why the support of healthcare is by definition needs to be by those that do not require healthcare at the time, then I'd imagine that their your are a bit underdeveloped.
*I'd imagine that their faculties are abit under-developed. Oops.
Seriously, the summary is even laughably over-spun. They are blaming this on the Obama administration while simultaneously admitting that Oregon set up a state exchange, meaning they did not require interaction from the federal website or the federal government for anything beyond certifying that people bought qualified plans. Yet we go and blame the low enrollment on Obama.
Of course, here on slashdot, anything and everything wrong in the world can be blamed on Obama and Monica Lewinsky, personally.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The whole Obamacare thing is about an overreaching government doing what the supermajority of people in the U.S. do not want them to do.
Oregon is just an indicator of how little politicians know how to RUN A BUSINESS.
A metric fuckton of people in IT operate as self-employed contractors.
Our past and current mockery of a health industry is very much of interest and relevance.
Exactly who saves money? My policy went up approx %50. Good show douchebags. I pay enough taxes, you want to cover the poor? Take it from congress. Let them suffer with the rest of us.
crucify the worthless fucks in congress...
...because politicians don't run businesses, they run a branch of government, and governments ARE NOT and SHOULD NOT BE businesslike.
Also, a "supermajority of the people in the U.S." don't want the Affordable Care Act, eh? I think you need to take a trip back to reality, where facts are king, and simply inventing "facts" like you're doing is generally frowned upon.
So here are some data points we start with:
1. The ACA is a neoliberal kludge designed to give more people healthcare without getting rid of the for-profit insurance industry.
2. The federal government hired private companies to make the federal website (to the degree that Congress would fund it).
3. Oregon hired Oracle to make their state website.
4. The state and federal websites both suck.
5. Lots more people are signing up for Medicaid than for private insurance through the exchanges, because it's free and easier.
Now, as a liberal I look at these data points and extrapolate, "Hmm, sounds like private industry isn't automagically more efficient at everything. Heck, I bet if we just extended Medicare to everyone we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with! We could skip the whole part where we let private companies take 15% of our insurance dollars even though the federal programs manage with like 6% overhead! Seems like basically every other industrialized nation in the world has the right idea!" But I guess if you stick enough ellipses in those bullet points, you're left with "ACA... website... suck." Which proves that government is the problem and we should let the invisible hand rule, or something.
The real "nerd angle" on this story has nothing to do with who's president, but rather that it's another one of Oracle's embarrassing failures. You'd have to be pretty desperate to blame anyone in D.C. for this.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
1) Take $300 million.
2) Split it between 44 people. $6.8 mill. each.
3) Tell them to go buy their own private executive class policies.
4) ????
5) Profit!
Have gnu, will travel.
All we need now is for the mayor of Toronto to give a speech about health care with sign language translation. The perfect storm.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Bullshit. The government is taking 60% of my money to redistribute it to the poor (while helpfully keeping a nice chunk for themselves).
Enough said, then.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Wikipedia Washington Examiner Political Views
Clearly a "news organ" of impeccable journalism like the Korean Central News Agency of the Democratic Republic of North Korea or Fox news.
No ideological bias here. Nothing to see, just move along...
Why is Snark Required?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameMaker:_Studio You're terrible at googling. Cower in my shadow some more, feeb.
Obamacare actually saves money while insuring more people. (Congressional Budget Office analysis).
I will now refute you: Health care costs were going down, but the ACA made them go up. (CMS actuaries analysis).
So, maybe you are annoyed that I didn't put any kind of reference, just threw that out there as a fact? Well, right back at you.
And I do have a reference and here it is: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/364815/governments-own-actuaries-think-obamacare-raising-not-lowering-costs-veronique-de-rugy
Some genius posted a story about it on /.
The website can handle XXXXX traffic per day.
and the rest is history.
And of the courageous 44, how many will go to prison for refusal to pay Obama Care taxes?
[Drum roll] The tension builds.
[Cymbal Crash] 44!
Ha ha.
The truly unfortunate thing about this article is that the only way to complain that it is pure unadulterated trolling clickbait that should never have appeared on Slashdot is to come in here and comment... which is exactly what they want us to do. More comments and more eyeballs means more ad impressions. They get rewarded for being stupid.
This is exactly how all the major news networks devolved from actual journalism into nothing but talking-head pundits screaming anti-factual idiocy at each other to feed their chosen audience's pre-conceived biases.
There really needs to be a separate, independent website somewhere where we can all get together and plan mini-boycotts every time the Slashdot editors put something utterly idiotic and biased like this in the lineup. Maybe after literally NOBODY comes in and comments on the stupider articles they'll get the picture and hire some smarter editors. Maybe in this way we could keep Slashdot from descending into total tabloidism and paid slashvertising.
Something simple, like the ability to nominate and then vote yea or nay on boycotting a nominated Slashdot article. Maybe the ability to make a one-line comment explaining your vote. If it gets too many nays, we boycott that particular Slashdot article by neither entering that page nor commenting on it. Thus, drastically reduced ad impressions for bad posts. Posts that aren't stupid enough don't get nominated, or don't get enough nays. Simple. A meta-Slashdot.
Maybe somebody could even turn it into a browser plugin that would let us nominate, vote and check the boycott/no-boycott status of each article on the main page by injecting some code right into the page as it loads, like a GreaseMonkey script.
Hit 'em where it hurts. In the coin purse. No pun intended.
Also, a "supermajority of the people in the U.S." don't want the Affordable Care Act, eh? I think you need to take a trip back to reality, where facts are king, and simply inventing "facts" like you're doing is generally frowned upon.
Nope, I've seen the poll results. "would you rather have the government set up death panels and dictate your health care options (ACA), or let the free market work it out?" And "Would you rather have it be a crime to not buy private insurance (ACA), or have a cheap single-payer system with better care for a lower price?"
People will pick the non-ACA answer when you make the question loaded, then the people that think the ACA didn't go far enough will be counted as opponents, even if they'd rather have the ACA than the previous system.
Learn to love Alaska
Doesnt this kind of Fraud warrant long prison sentences.
One hopes all those responsible for the outright lies and negligence and incompetance pay for squandering the citizens wealth all fro political gain and advancing their defective leftist agenda.
Prison time all round for the whole lot of them - from the Liar-in-Chief on down.
That's why you don't do it like that. Simple pay the damn doctors out of taxes. It's called a public healthcare. It works. It covers emergencies, spreading diseases, and things that keep you from being a productive part of society. For other things you can go to a private doctor. Why would any doctor work there? Why not? It pushes prices down when a big buyer says they will pay this much for these things. Yes, it means doctors won't earn millions, turns out they do just well with a bit less money. No, nobody is getting robbed, they don't HAVE TO sell, but because the buyer will only pay that much, ans their patients go there, they will be without jobs if they don't sell. This applies to drugs, and other healthcare items as well.
And no, you don't have to use the public health services, you may go to any private doctor you wish. You can buy medical insurance. They are actually very cheap, as emergencies are being taken care of by government, and that's the thing that costs a lot per person, but when divided by the total number of taxpayers is very small, and as the public healthcare treats things before they become emergencies it's way cheaper when looking at the big picture.
Your problem is not just how to divide the costs, it's getting the costs down. You are being ripped off by medical industry. (ha, medical INDUSTRY, get the point there?)
Eventually the buck stops somewhere, and any logical person would have to admit that at this point the Affordable Care Act has been rolled out terribly.
One piece of the Affordable Care Act has been rolled out terribly.
It's not even the most important part.
The really important pieces of the Affordable Care Act have been in place for months now.
Stuff like requiring insurance companies to spend ~80% of premiums on health care
and not disqualifying you because of a pre-existing condition. Or how about removing lifetime caps on coverage.
I could go on, but the Affordable Care Act has a lot of other moving pieces.
Eventually people will get signed up and then all the criticism will have done naught but poison the atmosphere.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The real story is the Oregon Department of Human Services procurement dropped the ball and we ended up with Oracle. Horrible, horrible, horrible Oracle. They should have scrapped the project or re-posted the request on ORPIN when every company dropped out of applying for the contract to build the system except Oracle.
Look how high tech this presentation is.
tl;dr: half Oracle's fault, half Oregon DHS being clueless about tech and procurement
I am 28 and presently uninsured. I delayed getting individual insurance because I knew my plan would be canceled at the end of this year (anybody who actually spoke with the insurance companies has known for a long time that "you can keep your plan" was a lie), so I figured I might as well wait for the Obamacare compliant plans.
Well, the Obamacare compliant plans cost literally over four times as much per month to get comparable insurance. People who went ahead and got the noncompliant plans have now got a reprieve by executive fiat; they can keep the cheap plans another year. All of the effects of this bill have been effectively canceled per dictatorial fiat except for socking it to me and others in similar conditions.
Depending on what happens with school and work, my income may be low enough that I don't need to pay the fine for being uninsured, but even if it isn't, it's better to pay the $95 fine and gamble on my health being OK than to pay $2400 for a crappy insurance plan.
The whole situation is insane. Health insurance should be like home insurance. The expected costs of home maintenance are paid out of pocket; your insurer doesn't pay your heating bill or pay to have your gutters cleaned out. Insurance is there to mitigate catastrophic risks, not to take care of your regular expected expenses for you. We do need robust assistance for those who can't pay their expected health costs, but that has nothing to do with insurance, and conflating the two won't make care more affordable. Not being able to pay your health costs is just another form of poverty; it's important to provide a safety net but this is a terrifically thickheaded way to try to go about it.
A few decades ago most people paid most of their health costs out of pocket and the country was better for it. Having employer insurance take care of everything is basically a modern tax avoidance racket. It's less efficient, the costs balloon, people without employer-provided insurance end up in more and more trouble, and the lost government revenue brings program cuts, higher deficits, or more economically disruptive ways of getting tax revenue. Insurance plans and health savings accounts should be taxed exactly like normal income and savings.
So you are expecting people who need Obama Care to have internet access?... What a joke.. Btw most people who get aid already 'some way through the state' already have been signed up through snail mail.
Just offer him the job as the US Drug Czar.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
the Affordable Care Act has absolutely nothing to do with Cover Oregon's problems.
the Cover Oregon website was a system devised with the influence of the insurance and health care *industry* to channel people to for-profit companies.
here is an NPR (Oregon Public Broadcasting) story that examines a person trying to use the site step-by-step: http://www.opb.org/news/article/are-health-insurance-companies-ranking-themselves-on-coveroregon/
the Cover Oregon website is only part of Oregon's rollout of Obamacare...they have 30,000 paper applications waiting to be processed
So there are several problems with your criticism of the ACA and socialized medicine in general
1. the ACA and 'Obamacare' is not socialized medicine (i wish it was)...it is a federal government subsidy of personal and business insurance executed in the federal system by either the states or the federal government itself
2. Cover Oregon's online system was made by a company funded by the insurance industry
3. Cover Oregon's website lists **ONLY** insurance plans from health care companies
4. "Cover Oregon" is a program, not a website. The **program** has signed at least 30,000 people to date which is alot more than 44
So you are wrong in every part of your premise.
Oregon contracted with Oracle to do it. I voted for Kitzhaber but I believe he fixes on an implementation idea early on, and really does not want to admit defeat or change courset, such as with the brain-damaged Columbia River Crossing project. And has too many sycophants around him too.
He'd be awesome to play poker with. Smart, but a bit too confident in his abilities, easily gets pot-committed and goes down in flames, but still hangs around for awhile.
Probably won't vote for him again. oregon can do better (and, no, it won't be from the Oregon GOP either).f
That seems to have more to do with a story about mental illness than anything else. He is an apperant schizophrenic, what's worse is that he had an episode during the speech.
It's probably a face-saving spin that can't be unverified. In any case, this was unprofessionally lazy.
It seems to me that this debacle says more about the practice of having any and all government function handed off to private contractors, much more than it says anything meaningful about Obamacare per se. This story doesn't add anything to that debate.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Upon a computer geek/nerd basis the interesting part of the story is that due to computer software contractor failures they are having to process the applications manually. The system was built so that either it completely worked or it completely failed, with no in between.
So it seems with large complex systems it makes somewhat illogical to design it to functional completely manually and then automate the various elements. Thus should any element fail it can be handled manually whilst the rest of the system continues to function. Otherwise one bug can result in total failure, which is pretty stupid for an essential system.
So this introduces a new geek/nerd design idea, should a manual system be designed first to simulate the eventual digital outcome. This provides a hands on, readily realisable system with established protocols that all operators and users can see and readily understand. It might take up a lot of space and take a lot of skilled design and hand crafting to achieve but it could be a more logical method of representing what needs to be achieved and provides manual backup for all automated elements.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Seriously, like 2 weeks ago they had still signed up no users at all. So 44 up from 0 is like 1,000% improvement or something ;-)
Oh, and by the way, IIRC they paid over $300 million to Oracle alone; total cost of the project was actually over $600 million!
Chuck Lorre Productions, #431
I'm confused as to why a poorly designed web site means affordable health care is a bad idea.
Also, a "supermajority of the people in the U.S." don't want the Affordable Care Act, eh? I think you need to take a trip back to reality, where facts are king, and simply inventing "facts" like you're doing is generally frowned upon.
Nope, I've seen the poll results. "would you rather have the government set up death panels and dictate your health care options (ACA), or let the free market work it out?" And "Would you rather have it be a crime to not buy private insurance (ACA), or have a cheap single-payer system with better care for a lower price?"
People will pick the non-ACA answer when you make the question loaded, then the people that think the ACA didn't go far enough will be counted as opponents, even if they'd rather have the ACA than the previous system.
And you don't think these questions are kind of flawed? Option one always sounds bad and the second one is as vague as it can be so it sounds better.
I'm not sure that it's a fair characterization that Obama care saves money. If it did, why did the medicare tax have to be extended to investment income, or why do high-value medical plans have to pay a luxury-tax, and why do we now have to pay a sur-tax/sales-tax on medical devices (which were previously exempt from transfer/sales tax)? It's because this money was required to pay for premium subsidies for "poor" people and for medicare expansion parts of the ACA.
We may be getting more value for the money we spend (more people covered, less overhead), but we are certainly not saving money.
Because of the fact of the federal subsidies (not the actual cost of services), in fact the more "poor" people sign up, the money that funded these subsidies came from taxes the "rich" must pay under the new law. Given the definition of rich these days (i.e., $250K single, $400K married), I imagine many if not most doctors fit that description...
Unfortunately, the real folks that get screwed under the ACA is the middle class. They make too much money to qualify for subsidies, they probably had reasonably good insurance already (equiv to gold/platinum which have fairly high premiums which are subsidized by the employer and the lowest out-of-pocket and high coverage percentages), but now they have to pay marginally more taxes and their premiums went up drastically to cover the expected increase in enrollees in these types of plans with pre-existing conditions (who don't mind the higher premium because they really need the benefit of high coverage percentage plans to reduce their out-of-pocket expenses to the 10% level of the platinum plan rather than the 40% level of the bronze plan).
As a result, many middle class are probably better off financially by avoiding the gold/platinum plans and switching to a high-deductible plan and putting their premiums into a health savings account, but that greatly increases the amount of paperwork they have to do (not a problem if you are rich and have an accountant to take care of this trivial stuff for you), so many middle class are likely to just end up subsidizing the folks with pre-existing conditions (I assume that even if you disagree doctors are rich, they are at least middle class, right?).
It appeared that there was some hope was that younger single people would join the ranks of those getting screwed because they would be "forced" to pay for insurance that they wouldn't use. However, it appears that those that didn't qualify for subsidies seem likely to not get insurance and not pay the fine (they don't appear to be signing up). Apparently the penalty for not paying the fine appears to be low and the IRS admitted they have no way to know if they need to fine someone (because they don't have a way to verify anyone has health insurance) short of a taxpayer audit so the offender must essentially voluntarily pay the fine.
...Oregon is a Democratic state...
LOL! The author obviously knows nothing about Oregon. Oregon is not a Democratic state. Portland is a city with a high population density of lefties surrounded by a sparsely populated state of Teabaggers.
Stinky poo.... was news for nerds.
If a state government trolled out a web site for c.40 people to the
tune of 300 million dollars something is astoundingly wrong.
Do the math against the population of Oregon in 2013, approximately 3,899,353.
Some that read News for Nerds recall the bubble where Dot/Bomb companies
left an economic wasteland behind them. I cannot convince myself that these funds
were spent in Oregon and I cannot convince myself that Oregon has not been
assaulted by financial thugs...
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
...to disprove the whole thing!
Oregon's system was *TECHNOLOGICICALLY* mismanaged, resulting in being *COMPLETELY* unable to accept new signups online before the deadline. Those 44 signups were by people who filled out paper sign-up forms and sent them in.
The system is "up and running" now, although still has issues.
But that's the technical side of it. The actual program is wonderful. I got released from my company in November. They had great insurance coverage. To keep it under COBRA, I would have to have paid over $1500 a month. The *EXACT* same plan, by the same insurance company, would have been $700 under Oregon's health exchange. (And a near-identical plan by a different carrier was $500.)
Yet they cost billions in today's money.
Because you can't scale down.
But freezing shallow water here is on a crusade to make out that only GoP is Good.
It was their plan a few years ago, and if you're saying that it's a bad plan now, it was a bad plan then.
So why did they propose a bad plan that they and you "know" is a bad plan?
Socipathy?
There's not much gets past you, eh, Sherlock?
If you like your sign language interpreter, you can keep your sign language interpreter. Please.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
California admitted last week than the vast majority of its "signed-up" people went into the fully-subsidized medicaid system (taxpayers funding their coverage completely). They will not release info in CA on how many people have completely signed-up for actual non-medicaid plans (you're not REALLY signed-up for any form of insurance until you make your first payment).
It has further been revealed that 70% of the doctors in CA are not included in the plans, nor are most hospitals
Turns out that even young dumb voters who elected Obama are not dumb enough to be easily tricked into buying coverage that's worse that the "sub standard" plans it replaces. Notice that the insurance companies are NOT the ones screaming about Obamacare? THEY climbed into bed with Obama in exchange for [a] a guarantee that all Americans would be ordered to buy their products, [b] the government requirement that they drop all their old low-cost plans and only offer plans with all the bells-and-whistles (over-priced for what the consumer gets) and [c] the government bailout that's in the law for the insurance companies if too few sign-up. Why's it dumb for the young to sign up? Simple: Look at the co-pays and deductibles.... the average young person who buys a "bronze plan" needs to pay something like $5K out of pocket PER YEAR before getting ANY benefit (more if you actually consider the co-pays) in addition to the monthly premiums... so he/she will be poorer while buying the plan and still likely go broke due to any big health problem). Obamacare is essentially over-priced catastrophic coverage; it gives the young all the worst features of the various Republican plans that were offered over the years, but without the advantages (most GOP plans were for individual low-cost catastrophic insurance plans, married to individually-owned and controlled health savings accounts and a national high risk pool)
It really won't be perfect until Rob Ford is elected POTUS, with Marion Barry elected PM of Canada.
NE PLVS VLTRA
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
good job, Progressives! a perfect example of govt 'efficiency'!
Pick any two.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Yeah, and last I heard, they were planning to sue Oracle for breach of contract -- a direct result of failing to meet every deadline in the development of that State's exchange, leading them to use a paper sign-up process. So, obviously, the law sucks donkey balls, because some contractors screwed shit up... again. Jesus... get a life.
Do you keep your KKK robes hung up in the closet, where they won't get wrinkled but someone might see them, or do you keep them folded in a drawer where they will get creased, but they will stay hidden?
Why is Snark Required?
An example of the effects of propaganda: People in Kentucky who have been signing up on Kentucky's state-run exchange have been reported saying things like "This is so much better than Obamacare, thank goodness that Kentucky set up their own program!" This is of course idiocy, since Kentucky's state-run exchange is simply a part of precisely what is being derisively referred to as "Obamacare".
But yes, Frank Luntz in particular is very very good at getting poll numbers that say whatever he wants them to say.
I am officially gone from
Would you rather take an elephant cock up the arse, or vote for a democrat?
I guess that makes you a filthy hippy liberal!
The average # of signups (per capita) from states w/ state exchanges still exceeds the # of signups (per capita) from states w/o a state exchange. So, in the aggregate, the state exchanges are still performing a lot better than healthcare.gov.
If Oregon has an extraordinarily low # of signups because its website, like healthcare.gov, is nigh-unusable, how does that disprove the claim that the PPACA roll-out suffered because of obstructionism on the part of Republican governors? Couldn't both be true?
It's kind of sad that people are so obsessed with the politics that they aren't mentioning what actually is relevant to the world of IT - Oracle completely screwed the pooch on a nine figure contract here.
Also ambulance rides are covered now. They used to be $500 and upwards. I suspect that this also covers helicopter flights too, but I'm not sure. Anyone know?
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Reminds me of the gun control polls that ask questions like, "Do you support background checks at gun shows?" (which there already are) and then conclude that 85% of the population wants more laws.
But, seriously, even polls run by the liberal media - Obama's lapdogs - aren't showing a lot of support for this. The peak was less than a majority. Just wait until people figure out that healthcare still isn't free.
:wq
Which then leaves us with 2 options: either he gets no treatment for his leukemia, or everyone else foots the bill. At least by signing up for insurance he's got some skin in the game.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Obamacare actually saves money while insuring more people.
Saves WHO money? My premiums went up, along with most people in the country.
...The really important pieces of the Affordable Care Act have been in place for months now. Stuff like requiring insurance companies to spend ~80% of premiums on health care and not disqualifying you because of a pre-existing condition. Or how about removing lifetime caps on coverage.
I could go on, but the Affordable Care Act has a lot of other moving pieces..
Quoting that because too many people think "exchanges" = The Affordable Care Act.
people that could not buy insurance because of pre-existing conditions now can. People that fall ill cannot have their insurance cancelled just because now they really need it. these problems have existed for DECADES and finally something has been done about it. Do I think it is the best possible plan? Hell no! But it is a better than what we had before, and better than anything that was brought up since Clinton's health care reforms went down in flames.
I like having healthcare. I'm not sure I'd want the President to personally provide it.
For example, you probably pay for car insurance. Most of the time, that's simply an expense with no benefit to you whatsoever. The reason you have it, though, is that the insurance company eats almost all of the expense if some idiot slams into your car at 90 mph on the highway.
The other thing many people forget about car insurance is that it's not about the car, it's about the people in it.
Car insurance, specifically the liability coverage, is for the situation where someone ends up in quadraplegic and they need 24/7 nursing care. Or where they're in a wheelchair and need to have their home retrofitted for access. Or even if you're crippled, you may have a many-week/month hospital stay, and you need income supplements since you're not working.
Most folks think of "car insurance" as simply "replacing/fixing my ride", but that's only a minor component.
They do, sort of; the 'extreme' left and 'extreme' right gang up on the corporate left and the corporate right, and are vilified by those as extreme.
What exactly is the "corporate left"?
Let them eat the consequences of their choices. If only we coudl arrange for THAT to happen, this argument and the one about global warming and vaccinations and stem cell research and evolution would be over within one generation.
They picked the worst company on earth, gave them $300M and thought they were going to get something for it. This has been covered for months by NPR -- nobody has signed up because the site has not been online yet, at all.
See here and here.
Anecdotally, a company I worked for in 2001 hired Oracle consulting to implement their own ERP system for us, and we ended up getting our money back because they could not even make their own software work.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Instead of talking about what went wrong in the IT systems, the article jumps a big gap to troll about obamacare. Poor execution of a project doesn't mean the project isn't worthwhile, if we want to stop the waste the real question here is how do we fix the government IT contracting process to give us the best bang for our buck.
what liberal media?
According to NPR. The last I heard on NPR they promised the site would be up by Dec 16.
Oregon's problems with the Cover Oregon site are reflective of a procurement process mired in the 1980s. Indeed, this is a problem at all levels of government, and is one of the issues to plague HealthCare.gov. The officials specing and evaluating proposals characteristically have little comprehension of modern software development, and simply give the contract to whatever proprietary vendor does the best marketing job on them.
Another recent, but unnoticed example of this skewed process, also from Oregon, is the awarding of the state's online portal development to a vendor clearly chosen, by key officials, before the process of selection even started. No consideration was given to open development or open standards, the meetings leading up to the purchase decision were just sales presentations by said vendor.
My personal favorite is still how, at one point, 45% opposed Obamacare, while 35% opposed the ACA.
The first failure was the state government believing Oracle could build the site. Oracle promised but didn't deliver, and now the state is taking the blame. Maybe Oregon should call Kentucky and copy what they are doing. Even a "hick" like gov Beshear knows that if you want it done right, you do it yourself.
photosMy Photostream
Even before the roll out the ACA has saved my family a few thousand dollars. The free mammograms and other preventative care exams that fall under the law have allowed my family to get checkups without having to worry about paying for them. Both my wife and I were uninsurable. I had to sell my business and get a government job to obtain health insurance. If the ACA was in effect back in the 80's, I might still have my business.
photosMy Photostream
Oregon is a blue state, because it only has a few population centers; Portland Metro, Eugene/Springfield and Salem. In those areas, people tend to have better job (and probably health insurance) and be more liberal. The rest of the state is made of very small towns than are conservative. This is a gross generalization, but it's also fairly true.
Oregon isn't blue; Portland and Eugene are blue.
Obama is a commie muslin socialist Nazi in much of the state, and Obamacare is just a way to take away you guns - or some such bullshit.
you do understand that the state exchange would not have had to have been set up if it were not for obamacare correct? sure they could have said no and went with the federal exchange but this is still the fault of obamacare
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Our son has medical insurance thru a local (Oregon) company.
They sent a notice that these are the plans and what they cost.
They said this plan is most like what you have and if you don't contact us we will sign you up for it.
Since it was a similar plan and cost less. He did nothing. Is this a sign up?
Sounds easy to me.
http://www.pollingreport.com/health.htm
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
not meant as a rebuttal. just a handy collection of basically all known polls on healthcare, including the multiple sources for the claim that "sure, a majority opposes Obamacare, but thats because included in that number is the people who think its not liberal enough and want a socialized healthcare system"
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
You've gotta be kidding. With the ID of "Required Snark" at least I hope so.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
the support of healthcare is by definition needs to be by those that do not require healthcare at the time
Your logic is indeed simple, and dead wrong. While, yes, the people actively earning the money to pay for health care are not generally the ones who have an pressing need for it, they are the ones who may have a need for it in the near future. You pay for insurance now, while you're healthy, because your health may take an unexpected turn for the worse. The amount you pay is supposed to correlate with actuarial risk, the probability and expected cost of each such event. Real insurance is not a wealth transfer scheme, or a subsidy, or charity. Real insurance does not require anyone to be forced to participate.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
From the report, a footnote at the end:
From: ASPE Issue Brief Page 12, ASPE Office of Health Policy December 2013
"(16) Oregon -- Between 10/01 and 11/02, Oregon had not yet started using its electronic eligibility determination system. In that period, Cover Oregon began receiving and processing paper applications (including applications by postal mail, fax, and fillable PDF). The “Completed Applications” indicator for this period reflects complete paper applications received. Midway through the time period 11/03 – 11/30, Oregon began using its electronic determination system to process paper applications. The “Completed Applications” indicator in this period reflects all applications that were ready to process for determination in the period."
So, let's see --- they were doing all the work with paper applications with no electronic support... no wonder they only finally got 44 applications processed completely!
The main contractor was Oracle, so large, complex systems that are somewhat illogically designed are their specialty.
snark still thinks the race card is redeemable. No more free passes, Obama used the last one in 2012.
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
OK, so I've RTFReport, and this story is crap. The data flowing into the report is inconsistent, so any conclusion is suspect.
First, go to page 9, where the 44 comes from. Look at the data in context. Look at the columns and try to interpret them.
Seems weird that most states #'s in cols 1 and 2 go up, but OR's go down. That literally makes no sense: more completed apps than people applying!? W.T.F.
Second, it looks like Oregon's got about 20 thousand submittals, and 6k deemed eleigible. WHY only 44? What's the missing detail? The report mentions technical problems in OR. Something weird/fishy here.
So, the report is built on data submitted by the states. And Oregon's (and a few others') seems to not parse sanely. THAT IS NOT THE SAME AS 'OMG!'. That's bureaucratic derptitude, or GIGO or whatever. It's a problem.
Rather than squawk about the failings (red meat for partisan flamewars and sensationalist wankery -- how sad that the only remaining slashdot effect is slashdot's editorial effort to drive up their internal reads/clicks), the nerdy takeaway seems to be an acceleration on the climb of enrollments on page 3 (cool, techies are getting the tech under control), and the report's attempt to gather and slice/dice data to guide states on decisions of what works or what doesn't (mmm, data to manipulate!)
Wow, these all sound like the bad parts:
Stuff like requiring insurance companies to spend ~80% of premiums on health care
Sounds nice, but it's a feel good do-nothing. If a company was charging that much for for the same healthcare as other companies, they people would switch. Was this really a big problem that we were facing? Does it take into consideration all of the variety of care options? What if one company found a system by which they could keep people healthier for less money?
"and not disqualifying you because of a pre-existing condition"
This would be like me calling a car insurance company and buying insurance for a car that had already been in an accident, then expecting them to pay for the accident. This isn't fair to the companies and it makes it so that you don't really need insurance - after all, if you get cancer that costs huge sums of money to cover, you can just sign up for insurance then and the insurance company has to pay for it
Or how about removing lifetime caps on coverage
Lifetime caps are a way of preventing an insurance company from having to close their doors due to a single patient. "I need $500million in surgeries over the next few years? Sure, my insurance company will pay it"
If you put yourself in the shoes of the insurance companies that are just trying to help people without getting ripped off these ideas are poison. Thus, fewer companies exists and the ones that do can charge more due to lack of competition.
Hmmm. It cost $300 million dollars to sign up 44 people. Oregon received a $300 million Federal grant. I wonder just how much of that $300 million ended up in the Governors pocket.
To be honest, I'm only saying this because I've seen schizophrenia up close and personal, and to be frank, the type of forms it takes, and its effects on people is so varied that I'm not at all surprised that his had happened.
background checks at Gun Shows depends on the state. California is one of the few that do require it, but most states don't. Federal law does not currently require background checks for "private sales" such as those done at gun shows.
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/gun-show-firearms-bankground-checks-state-laws-map.html
Sorry, but your assertion that they are an exclusive club is fundamentally flawed. EVERYBODY AT SOME POINT WILL NEED HEALTHCARE. I hope that's clear enough in terms of where I'm coming from with this argument. If you have a child with a disability, you will quickly realize how absurd it is to expect them to have financed their own care. And if you dare peak at a case where neither parent was well todo, but well enough to concieve, and THEN have this hit them, and say to me that they deserved it, I will dismiss you as inhumane and hostile.
And what the fuck is this supposed to mean?
More than 44 people in Oregon have internet access? astonishing.
Every elected official in the administration is a Democrat.
The Democrats are the majority party in both the state house and the state senate.
Both US senators and four of five members of the US house are Democrats.
So yeah, we're a majority Democrat state.
Federal law requires backgound checks by dealers at gun shows. Appending the "private-sales-such-as-those-done-at-gun-shows" is exactly the kind of leading statement we're talking about. Private sales at shows are like .001% of all transactions (don't believe Bloomberg's lies).
That kind of statement is intentionally misleading people into thinking that there are no backgound checks at gun shows. It is SIMPLY NOT TRUE.
Go to a show. Try to buy a gun without a check. YOU CAN'T.
Almost everyone does need health care at some point, but not everyone has above-average risk factors. Those who do should expect to pay more for insurance, not because they "deserve" hardship, but simply because their expected cost is higher.
The right way to handle the case you described would be pre-conception insurance against birth defects. You and your partner undergo some tests and agree to pay a fixed amount based on your risk factors, and if anything goes wrong the insurer covers the cost of treatment.
Insurance is fundamentally equivalent to betting that something will go wrong. The default state without insurance is equivalent to betting that everything will go right; an opposing bet balances out the extremes, both good and bad. Requiring insurers to cover pre-existing conditions without a corresponding increase in premiums amounts to letting people place their bets after the race is finished, on the same terms as those who bet before the race. It would be more honest, not to mention more efficient, to just pay the health care costs directly out of tax money (a la Medicaid) rather than perverting the concept of insurance into some kind of pseudo-charity. At least then people could see where their money is going.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Actually there is a very good reason for mandatory maternity care: we'll all need it at least once in our lives, assuming you were born. For people who have children of their own, they'll need to use the insurance at least twice, assuming they only have one pregnancy.
Looking at the bigger picture though, asking everyone to share in the costs gets to the very basic nature of insurance: today your premiums go to support someone who has a claim even though you have none. Tomorrow you may have a child, get hit by a bus, or have to deal with debilitating conditions of old age and their premiums will go to pay your claim. One for all and all for one. If you pull out pregnancies because you're not of child bearing age or old age benefits because you're not old, then you just shrink the pool ever smaller and raise premiums for everyone. The insurance companies would love that scenario because then they can jack your premiums even higher.
At the end of the day the main purpose of government and society is to provide security to its members and accomplish goals that individuals alone cannot do. While some people don't agree with the premise, a lot of people feel that health care fits into that category.
Not only are medical bills the number one cause of bankruptcies in the U.S., but they also account for two thirds of the bankruptcies. Those are some pretty damning numbers.
Single payer universal health care is the only sensible option. No deductible, no expenses. Couple that with an outcome-based payment system and then you've got some real reform to talk about.
You're trying to control life in a way that cannot be controlled? Birth defect testing? Seriously? Somehow the rest of the world is managing without this idiocy with insurance and somehow all of that is being ignored. The moment you feel like you should be in charge of how people are born is the moment you are too dangerous to have a say in a civilized society.
Not sure why this is such a big deal. There are some people who are against Obamacare, but didn't know that the Affordable Care Act is the same thing. Why is that a problem?
Practice your reading comprehension:
>Realistically there is absolutely no reason for mandatory maternity care insurance to add any cost to the insurance plan of somebody beyond child-bearing age
Though I'll admit that yes, if a company didn't previously cover maternity care for anyone, and was then forced to do so, they may very well choose to spread the cost around even to those not directly affected.
As for parents using maternity care at least twice - you're double counting there. If you're crediting everyone with using materinty care once when born, then the only people using it more than once are those who become pregnant but don't carry to term, if they carried to term then the usage would be counted to their child.
No argument on the nature of insurance, but I would contest your claim of the purpose of government - seems to to me the real purpose of government historically has always been to concentrate wealth and power while keeping the masses in line. Any benefits for the masses are a secondary consideration, important only insofar as it buys additional freedom of action for the rulers. The idea of government of and for the people is a worthy ideal, and hopefully we'll reach it someday, but in the meantime it's important not to confuse the ideological wrapper with the motives behind those making the sale. Assuming you want to actually have an influence at least.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
So this introduces a new geek/nerd design idea, should a manual system be designed first to simulate the eventual digital outcome. This provides a hands on, readily realisable system with established protocols that all operators and users can see and readily understand. It might take up a lot of space and take a lot of skilled design and hand crafting to achieve but it could be a more logical method of representing what needs to be achieved and provides manual backup for all automated elements.
Not sure this is feasible since the advantages of a manual system are very different from the advantages of a digital system. I think the better lesson is redundancy and modularity. When it comes to a can't fail website why not build two websites instead of one, mirror everything all the way down the chain. Even if they don't end up modular to the extent of swap in/out you've now given both teams a huge motivation to succeed since they both want to be the site that's used.
I stole this Sig
http://marketrealist.com/2013/10/shutdown-101-perceived-wealth-distribution-isnt-reality/
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph
Health care disparities would presumably reflect that too, to some extent. But a deeper issue is how health is more than access to "sick care", What you eat, how much you worry, where you can live, whether you have time for self-education and exercise, these are also big factors, and those connect to at least a certain level of wealth.
The USA is really confused about that, in part because of decades of propaganda funded by very selfish people.
On global issues, see:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/10/world/gapminder-us-ignorance-survey/
http://www.gapminder.org/ignorance/
http://www.gapminder.org/GapminderMedia/wp-uploads/Results-from-the-Ignorance-Survey-in-the-US..pdf
Meanwhile, China is about to land a robot on the moon!
As George Orwell said:
http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/george-orwell
"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, whene we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, is possible to carry this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Just to add to my point, the inability of US governments to put up fairly basic websites after spending so much money shows something deeply dysfunctional about the US political process.
China has just landed Chang'e on the moon! One big difference. The US government is run by lawyers. China's government is run by engineers:
http://singularityhub.com/2011/05/17/eight-out-of-chinas-top-nine-government-officials-are-scientists/
Pros and cons from both approaches... We really need a healthy mix of all types in government...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It costs money? Hmmm.... I don't recall paying for health care insurance. I'm from Canada, anywhere else in the world have to pay for health care? or am I the only sucker who gets it for free.
The REAL split is between the Cities and Not the Cities. And goes back quite a while, at least half a century. The operating level of political difference is really at the County Level, not the State level
Right on. Red versus Blue is becoming less important as time goes on, yet false paradigms are used to rally them against one another like opposing teams. Bread and circuses.
Megacities and the urban sprawl which surround and connect them create zones of provincial sentiment. It really is a mind-set. At a certain point the city becomes the state (New York, California, Maryland) and views in opposition to those of the urban voting block go to margin.
The urban-rural schism is the most pervasive, but there are regional differences that also transcend party. Look at Colin Woodward's 11 Nation-States of America, which paints a few large swaths across the continent by county which represent waves of immigrant settlers, who seeded these geographic areas with attitudes that, just as with dialect, influence voters today. Even those who re-settle into those areas (and especially their children) adopt the flava. With whimsical names like Yankeedom, New Netherlands, Midlands and Tidewater one can almost imagine a Tolkienesque retelling of the American Tale, and I wish this concept may some day grow into an alternate-selection textbook of history that follows these waves without so much distracting clutter of place-names. On this map South Florida does not even make the list, it is a grey zone labelled 'Part of the Spanish Caribbean'. Hilarious!
Urbanites are more accepting of incremental erosion of personal liberty and a pattern of ever-increasing (but never abrupt) government involvement. I see this described in derogatory fashion as if they are simple sheeple or something, but I don't subscribe to such a vulgar character judgement. I think it may simply be that they are more often exposed to utopian ideals and idealists which say, we're this-close to solving this problem, all we need to do is this one more thing. Urbanites see their government as a machine that just needs a little tuning here and there. And it is a machine of sorts, one that gathers distant water rights and political power. Eventually the political sway of populous megacities will be complete, but in the United States it is not happening fast enough for them.
Which is why they are attacking the Constitution directly, seeking an end-run play to nullify the effect of electoral college via the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. I find this to be an insidious -- almost evil -- self-castration of a state's right to choose a President. If there is a battle between the Cities and Not the Cities, this is the front line. Look at the green (passed) and yellow (pending) states on the map. There are your cities vying for political domination.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact was started by disenfranchised supporters of Al Gore who decided that if they lost it must mean that the system was broken. So now there are climate people who wish Gore would stick to politics and political people who wish he would stick to climate. I always wished he would become un-stuck from everything, and found it egregiously obnoxious that this NSA stooge who pushed the Clipper Chip was considered to be presidential material.
No matter exactly what the framers intended, the Electoral College creates a swing zone within which the growing influence of urbanized areas may (yet) reach a balance point with the desires of the sparsely populated rural peoples. This balance point, in which everyone becomes aware that the popular and electoral results diff
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
[[snip]] far greater percentage of racist, homophone, bigoted, redneck assholes[[snip]]
C'mon, let's all sing along with Homophone Monkey
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
not Gamemaker. Oracle. Just as bad.
Oregonians can also sign up for Medicaid through the Cover Oregon's paper-application process if they are found eligible. Since Oct. 1, 9,219 people had signed up for Cover Oregon that way in addition to the already 90,000 who were already signed up. That's in 13 days. So they're actually at in the top ten states. Misdirected news reports. LOL. What a surprise. Any questions?
reactionary propaganda from a right wing propaganda rag.
to pay your own healthcare costs out of pocket.
That was then, this is now. That has not been the case for at least 20 years for most Americans.
That private industry and special interests have caused the price of health care to skyrocket and bankrupt people when they need health care in the US is a core issue obfuscated by the current political climate. BOTH parties have screwed the public, BOTH parties are in the pocket of the insurance industry, and BOTH parties have lied, continue to lie, and will continue to lie.
The US is a nation of rampant corruption, we have a corporate caste system, and our politicians are, simply put, whores for big business. Under these circumstances Obamacare is actually working extremely efficiently !
w3.org and webpagetest.org can validate HTML, CSS errors on the sites and check website performance.
I checked WA, KY, CT to compare to MNSure.org (MN). WA, KY, CT are known to be working sites, MNSure.org has problems.
WA KY CT have low or no HTML or CSS errors, they also have web site performance enhancements such as file compression, CDN and script handling.
MNSure.org has many errors and no website performance enhancements.
It is obvious that the "working" sites have better project management, quality control and acceptance criteria and testing. MNsure.org not so much.
I also think, perversely enough due to the effort required to manually do things, it will act as an effective brake on customers asking for everything imaginable no matter how difficult or ultimately useless. The sort of stuff that destroys complex systems time and time again. A manual system is the most effective means by which the non-programming literate can most effectively express their needs and goals.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
They may make more than your or me, but in the overall scheme of things it's hospital administrators, pharmaceutical company CEOs, insurance company owners, and bankers who are really really rich.
I worked for a hospital for 10 years. The doctors made more than the administrators. I guess maybe you mean like a huge health care chain or something?
But. .. in the one hand you're calling this a fairly simple website, while on the other hand we'be been hearing from the right wing since forever about how this project is doomed to failure due to its vast complexity. Which matches the analyses of lots of industry figures who point out that this "simple" website has to integrate the user's personal data, the IRS data, the state healthcare management database, and the data from all the insurers selling I'm that site, with highest security for each database, at a large volume.
Add to that the fact that this article is actually talking about the Oregon state exchange not the federal exchange, and your observation regarding the greater competence of smaller governments would seem questionable.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Oops that last paragraph was an answer to a different post, not yours. Never mind!
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.