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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.'"
You don't even have to read the summary to figure that one out, only as far as "cold fjord writes".
Strangely, "big government" isn't mentioned anywhere in this summary, either he's slipping in his duties as a troll, or maybe I give too little credit and it was edited out by samzenpus.
THe blues and reds should gang up on the greens (not environmentalists, but capitalists)
Learn to love Alaska
You don't think spending $300,000,000 for 44 people to use a web site matters? Wow.
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
1. Washington Examiner is one of the MOST extreme right wing political rags in the country.
Assuming that is even true: Did that change the number of people that signed up? Did that change the amount of money that was spent on the Oregon Obamacare project? It appears the answer to that is "No" and "No." It might make them more interested in doing a key job of the media, which is ferret out waste, fraud, and abuse. If the only media is the sort of tame media that President Obama has had for most of his term, you get what we got.
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
Wait, are you suggesting that there is a story here? That the web site was a disaster? Shouldn't that be in the media? Isn't that a story worth being told, especially when it costs $300,000,000 for a state? That is a lot of money for a relatively small state. That seems to suggest that your objections to this being covered are nonsense.
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.
You just seemed to indicate above that it was a story worth telling in its own right, that it was a disaster for the state. Why wouldn't you want that story being told? Oh, see #1. You disagree with the viewpoint, and don't want the story being told. That is why having media outlets with a different viewpoint is important. You wouldn't want to tell the story, they would. Moderate your post -1 !insightful.
As to your rosy picture of signups in the rest of the country:
Juking the ObamaCare Stats - HHS won't disclose the enrollment data that really matter.
On Wednesday the Health and Human Services Department continued its Victorian-era strip tease and allowed a glimpse into the Affordable Care Act's "enrollment" for November. Out of respect for a free press, reporters ought to boycott these releases because they're so selective that they reveal little about real enrollment. But we'll try to parse the data as best we can without the White House high gloss.
A charitable reading suggests that ObamaCare's net enrollment stands at about negative four million. That's the estimated four million to five and a half million people who had their individual health plans liquidated as ObamaCare-noncompliant—offset by the 364,682 who have signed up for a plan on a state or federal exchange and the 803,077 who have been found eligible to receive Medicaid.
HHS is boasting of enrollment for November that was four times as high as October, yet 62% of the total was in the state exchanges, some of which are marginally less prone to crashing than the federal version. Then again, 41 states posted sign-ups only in the three or four figures, including eight states that run their own exchanges. Oregon managed to scrape up 44 people. Among the 137,204 federal sign-ups, no state is reaching the critical mass necessary for stable insurance prices. -- more
Not quite so rosy.
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