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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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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"
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
The real idiots are the ones who lump together all levels and branches of government for no rational reason other than they're forms of government.
That makes about as much sense as saying "What do you really expect from the EU, given the way the Chinese government tramples on human rights. Just be glad they didn't ship you off to a concentration camp."
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.
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
Democrats want is to fail to prove that private enterprise can't handle healthcare and we need the government to do it.
I know of almost no one who wants the government to handle healthcare - they want the government to handle health insurance. Big difference. Doctors practices, hospitals, etc. continue to operate as separate entities. See, for example, Canada, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland, etc. As for the wonders of Obamacare - the only system in the developed world that relies primarily on for-profit insurance companies - get back to me when it has cut costs by 1/3. That would bring us inline with the next most expensive healthcare systems.
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.
> "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
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.
As far as the middle east goes, it's so fucked that it would not matter what you'd call it, but clusterfuck would always be accurate.
What, you never heard of corruption?
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."
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"?
Utterly beside the point. Look at the headline: they picked the state that did the worst over the course of its first month already known to be riddled with website issues. News, this ain't -- no need to defend its nerdsforiness.
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?
Some genius posted a story about it on /.
The website can handle XXXXX traffic per day.
and the rest is history.
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
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!
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.
Yes, so you have to ask yourself why none of them voted for their own plan from a couple decades ago. Could it be political grandstanding do you think?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
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
...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.
Pick any two.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
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
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
My personal favorite is still how, at one point, 45% opposed Obamacare, while 35% opposed the ACA.
Except for the republicans did not obstuct the rollout in anyway shape or form, sure they wanted to stop it from becoming law by voting "no" and they are trying to get it repealed, but they simply stayed out of the way when it comes to the actual rollout, they all voted no, and the democrats own this mess as they are in charge "the buck stops here" I recall our president saying a time or 2
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same