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Emails Cast Unflattering Light On Internal Politics of Healthcare.gov Rollout
An anonymous reader writes with this report from The Verge linking to and excerpting from a newly released report created for a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, including portions of eight "damning emails" that offer an unflattering look at the rollout of the Obamacare website.
The Government Office of Accountability released a report earlier this week detailing the security flaws in the site, but a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released yesterday is even more damning. Titled, "Behind the Curtain of the HealthCare.gov Rollout," the report fingers the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversaw the development of the site, and its parent Department of Health and Human Services. "Officials at CMS and HHS refused to admit to the public that the website was not on track to launch without significant functionality problems and substantial security risks," the report says. "There is also evidence that the Administration, to this day, is continuing its efforts to shield ongoing problems with the website from public view."
Writes the submitter: "The evidence includes emails that show Obamacare officials more interested in keeping their problems from leaking to the press than working to fix them. This is both both a coverup and incompetence."
There are hundreds of EDI-type transactions behind every one of those "simple" actions. Plus verification, cross-matching with multiple insurance carriers (each with their own system), testing all the interconnections. Just to scratch the surface.
sPh
I haven't looked closely at that link you posted, but every similar story I've looked into has gotten big "wasteful" numbers by adding together the entire IT budgets for multiple years and multiple projects, and then presenting it as a "OMG government waste! OMG OMG!!!" story.
And sadly people lap it up because everyone loves whining about things but refuses to verify the stories. Not that government is perfect, but it certainly won't get better when most individual "government failure" stories are full of lies and misinformation.
For example, the article you linked to says "As of November 2013, the federal exchange healthcare.gov. is estimated to have cost $677 million". Which is a complete lie: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2...
It's trivial to find that that figure is a lie, yet that article still listed it. And you believed it. And I bet you'll keep on reading that website and believing their lies.
Why?
Good thing the health care fairy provided all that coverage for free, or else we'd have to talk about the costs of all that new coverage, which you conveniently ignored.
Let's assume that 12 million estimate is correct, that due to Obamacare, 12 million people who weren't insured before are now insured. Of course, other people give different estimates, but let's give Obama the benefit of the doubt.
The net cost of Obamacare to the federal taxpayers is $1.3 trillion (CBO). $1.3 trillion / 12 million people covered = $11.3 million per person.
I don't think we got a good deal.
The $11 million per person covered is of course just the direct cost to the federal government. In 2013, we saw the following rate increases due to Obamacare:
Connecticut: 37% average rate increase
Florida: 42% average rate increase
Illinois: 33% average rate increase
Michigan: 39% average rate increase
Minnesota: 35% average rate increase
The trend accelerates in 2014:
Delaware 100%
New Hampshire 90%
Indiana 54%
California 53%
Connecticut 45%
Michigan 36%
Florida 37%
Georgia 29%
Kentucky 29%
Pennsylvania 28%
So there's another trillion dollars it cost average Americans, in the form of much higher premiums. A couple TRILLION dollars to (maybe) cover $12 million people. At a cost of around $20 million per person covered, I don't think I'd trumpet that as a victory if I were a Democrat. (And in fact Democrat most candidates are distancing themselves from the mess.)
Umm.. The numbers are not even close to 12 million.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/th...
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/...
Obamacare seems to have only helped a little under 3% of the people who did not have coverage previously. Even now, there are still problems with it as one of the largest insurance companies in Minnesota is pulling out of the exchange.
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/...
Now before you get all pissy, this isn't a swipe at obamacare, it's the facts surrounding it that you seem to have missed and evidence of the GP's statement that "they simply do not have any clue to anything that they are involved with". Evidently, neither do you unless you were listening to them.
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/defau...
Forbes? Really? REALLY?
sPh
please describe _exactly_ what you find so objectionable about the Affordable Care Act
I used to have affordable insurance for my wife and I. The ACA killed it. Were forced to go to a new plan that:
1) Has much higher monthly premiums (we went from roughly $230/month to about $500/month)
2) Has a hugely higher deductible (we went from $2,500 a year to about $12,000 a year). This means that we are much, much farther out of pocket every year, especially if we actually need medical care beyond one or two simple visits annually.
3) We are past any risk of pregnancy. None the less, we are being forced to pay for elaborate maternity care that we cannot possibly use.
4) The new plan forced us to give up the doctor we've been using for 15 years unless we want to pay cash for that in a way that doesn't help with our deductible.
5) The two best local hospitals are no longer available to us unless we want to pay retail for their use, and get no benefit against our deductible.
Prior to this "affordable" new act, we had no need to change insurance, doctors, hospitals or anything else for well over 10 years.
Because of how the math is working out, we're told to expect that next year's premiums will go up by another 45-55%. Thanks, Mr. Obamacare Cheerleader, if you're one of the people who helped to empower the people who snuck this 100% partisan monstrosity through congress on Pelosi's "deeming" technique. Thanks a lot.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I used the CBO estimate of $1.3 trillion. You linked to their revised estimate of $1.38 trillion. Yes, you're right, it'll be 6% more expensive than the estimate I used. :rolleyes:
You forgot to include the economic boost from the people now able to return to work faster/not dying/getting preventative care so they never get sick. Also the lowered cost of care for people who now can get treated before it becomes an emergency. Most of the cost of Obamacare is recognizing costs that were, until now, hidden.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
BS the new plans have HUGE deductible's and only cover what they are forced to (mostly female and child related bits). Premiums have doubled and are looking like 3x for next year. Dental is a joke if you can even find a plan that offers it. Lets compare:
Before 400 ish a month now 800 ish.
Reasonable deduct 5k but only for major stuff all the day to day excluded, now 10k and nearly everything feeds into it.
Dental and Optics built in, now just for kids and maybe a realy bad tack on.
It really matters what state your in. But from my point it looks like the rates got jacked up by whatever the max the feds would pay. This is what tends to happen whenever the feds throw money at something, economics kicks in and the cost of goods goes up by whatever the feds tacked on.
No sir I dont like it.
I can't resist but to feed the troll. This guy claims to pay '$12,000/year in deductibles', but the federal silver plan is about a fifth of that. Even the federal bronze plans don't have deductibles that high. Once again..another republican moron that didn't graduate high school trying to run the company... Before you mod down, educate yourself: https://www.healthcare.gov/how...
$1.3 trillion (US) federal tax cost / 12 million people = $11.3 million per person covered. Does that look right so far, or did I fat-finger the calculation? That's US trillion, which is different from UK trillion, I believe.
As has already been pointed out you were off by a factor of 100 and that's assuming the basis of your calculation is correct. It isn't.
Here is the actually CBO report: https://cbo.gov/publication/45...
They estimate 1.4 trillion over the next __10 years__ with a net cost of $36 billion in 2014. 36 billion for 11 million people is approximately $3300 per person per year. Without considering inflation that is about $33,000 per person over 10 years.
For comparison the US goverment in 2012 spent $4075 per person on healthcare (http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_STAT#).
On a side note, European nations providing free healthcare to their entire population spent about $3500 (Purchasing Parity USD) per person in 2012. Adding in private expenditures and the US spent about 2~2.5x the amount per person on healthcare as comparible nations in Western Europe / Australia / Japan and generally achieved worse out comes in pretty much all categories.