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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."
Someone didn't do their job.
But it really isn't a surprise those responsible are now in CYA and finger pointing mode.
If you think it's limited to government, you must be very, very young.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I feel sorry for Rollo. He seems to get all the blame ever since he stated working for that website project.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
US politics at its finest. We select the most popular people around to lead, and then act surprised when it turns out that they're not necessarily the best leaders...
There is no failure to see here - move (on) along - the websites have brilliantly served their purposes - they've managed to transfer $5 billion so far from taxpayers to the carefully selected chosen ones - who will carefully contribute to the next group of chosen ones. http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/...
So what you're saying is that: 1) The administration didn't knowingly force people to use a badly designed, insecure web site that wasn't ready for prime time. That's just something the administration's critics made up, out of context. 2) The administration has fixed all of the security concerns, and that the whole platform is now working as they promised it would, and that anyone saying otherwise is lying and spinning the glorious real facts on the ground. I see.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yup, just no clue. I mean, in 2014 alone twelve million Americans who did not previously have health insurance were covered, adding to the estimated 20 million who have obtained some form of insurance benefit and access to health care since the law took effect in 2011. Plus pre-existing condition coverage, lowering overall national spending on health, etc. Horrible, horrible stuff.
In your foaming response, please describe _exactly_ what you find so objectionable about the Affordable Care Act. Discuss the 12 million previously uninsured Americans who were able to obtain health insurance and health care in 2014 and what you believe should happen to them. If you were extended on your parents' plan for at least a year post-2011 state how many additional years on your parents' plan you used. If you have corporate health insurance, describe exactly how the ACA affected your coverage. If your response is that premiums went up, you had to change doctors, etc list how many times that happened to you in the 10 years prior to the ACA being passed.
sPh
1) The administration didn't knowingly force people to use a badly designed, insecure web site that wasn't ready for prime time. That's just something the administration's critics made up, out of context.
That is correct. The administration did not force anybody to use the website at all during the period it was non-functional. There were alternative ways of signing up, and the enrollment periods were extended to allow time to use the system once it was in better shape.
2) The administration has fixed all of the security concerns, and that the whole platform is now working as they promised it would, and that anyone saying otherwise is lying and spinning the glorious real facts on the ground.
I'm sure that not all security concerns have been addressed. I'm sure that 20 years from now they won't be addressed. In fact, I doubt there is a single government or corporate website functioning anywhere where all security concerns are addressed.
I think the issue here is unrealistic expectations. This is an incredibly large undertaking, and problems with large undertakings are fairly common.
If it were up to me I'd greatly simplify the whole mess which would make rollout much less complex. I'd start by simplifying medicare so that there is just one deductible, coinsurance rate, and out of pocket limit for everything. Then I'd just start ratcheting down the eligibility age a few years at a time until everybody is eligible from birth. No new systems to deal with, etc. Then I'd start fixing the provisioning of healthcare services (start opening public providers and gradually transition the system to one where the coverage network is government-run). But, the various vested interests don't want to buy into something like that, so we end up with the affordable care act instead of a system like one of those that has already been tried and tested elsewhere.
To be fair... I have worked on many software projects in my life and have also worked with government software projects. A simple fact of life is that government funded software projects are only given to blood sucking leeches that intentionally underbid and lie their asses off about delivery schedules. Legitimate software houses who actually can plan projects and meet schedules are never evaluated.
From what I can tell, the site is up and running "mostly" only a year late and not nearly as over budget as I expected. What do you expect from a project initiated by uneducated people like politicians and sales people. They of course ask "computer experts" for help, but let's be honest... Politicians wouldn't know a qualified computer programmer from a Barbie doll.
I support ObamaCare aka ACA on a federal level simply because it requires one big ass database system to be made by one company with a whole nation of people to kick the crap out of the company making it. And let's be honest... Whether the system is for all of America or just a state, the system is almost the same.
Imagine if a state like Mississippi or Oklahoma had to get a system made? They'd hire a guy named Jom Bob from church to do it. They'd piss away the entire budget before they even found Jim Bob. They'd run it on index cards and toilet paper in type writers with no correction ink.
Is there anyone dumb enough on Slashdot to think :
A) a government sponsored software project can be done without corruption, delays and major budget problems?
B) all 50 states in America could actually manage to get a system up and running at a state level... Why not ask Florida about their prepaid college project and how bad that for screwed up. I worked at the company writing that one and that project was doomed to fail before it even started. They built the damn thing on Tandem computers with Thomas Conrad ArcNet and had a total of one guy who even knew how to boot the machine.
This was not an incredibly large undertaking. The functionality is not complex. Nothing about it is complex or incredible large.
It has to:
1. Allow you to create an account;
2. Verify your identify;
3. Show you available health care plans in your area;
4. Let you select one;
5. Help you pay for it.
In its basic form, this is something that a group of college kids could whip up in a week or so.
The only thing even approaching complex is scaling to handle a ton of load during the registration periods - and those are problems that have been solved at Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and any other high traffic site.
Maybe you like this health care system, and that's okay. We can disagree on that point. What I cannot allow is for you to tell me that this website is some kind of horrible, complex, unknown beast that simply could not be tamed, a website so complex that few applications could approach it in terms of functional requirements.
Love sees no species.
In my city, one company owes 80% of the hospitals and doctors. The other 20% are owned by another company. The 80% company is now not letting the 20% insurance plans to use their facilities, to drive that one out of town. So in fact, if you want good health care choices, you have no real choice which insurance plan you use.
Also, 30% of the city has an ISP choice between fiber and cable; the rest has DSL or cable. Get a bit outside of town and DSL goes away. So there is almost no choice in ISPs, and when they have horrible policies they don't care at all what I say.
On the other hand, with government I can vote to change the people and policies. It's not perfect, and it doesn't always work (especially when most people whine about the govt but don't vote), but it often does work. We've gotten rid of a senator who ran on religious bigotry and hatred, for example.
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
A site intended to serve up to 30 million people execute complex financial changes in a 90-day window was three months late, went live at ~80% capability, and will probably be close to 95% capability at the beginning of its second year of operation is a "disaster"? Perhaps you don't remember the early days of, say, Amazon?
sPh
Cover up, incompetence, and Government. Why am I not surprised at all.
and somehow twist it to interpret it as making the claim that it's limited to government?
You must be very very dumb.
Liberty.
Pretty sure it's from the non-partisan GAO, not the "Republican house". Anyhow, why would the source matter, what matters is if it is true or not. It seems that's not something you even considered.
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.
> BTW, this is emblematic of the Obama administration
It's emblematic of EVERY administration going back thousands of years. Right wing present that this is something new but their world view seems to be completely uninfluenced by an appreciation of human nature or history.
For example:
Augustus was a shrewd and effective manager of his own public image. Itâ(TM)s now easy to take for granted that images of political leaders decorate our currency â" Augustus was among the first rulers to widely disseminate images of his own face on coins.
Itâ(TM)s hard to imagine even the most ardent Democrats supporting the literal deification of Barack Obama or erecting small shrines in his honor throughout Washington DC. By contrast, after Julius Caesar was posthumously declared a god, Augustus, as his adopted son, became known as the son of god. Along with the other gods, he received dedications at small crossroads shrines throughout Rome.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books...
Someone who can blame Obamacare on Republicans is someone who can blame anything on them.
I'm sure Republicans are responsible for every bad thing that's ever happened. Like say the Black Death, Microsoft Bob, and Brittany Spears.
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.)
My complaint? My family health cost has tripled. That's 3 times what it did cost. Oh yeah, the level of service we get for that extra is not only missing but the quality has gone down dramatically. I suppose you cold say my problem is with the Education Department, somehow they forgot to teach people about the failures, corruption and down right misery of socialism.
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.
My mother's deductibles wouldn't change if she switched to one of the 'ObamaCare' plans. They're already in the triple or quadruple digits (depending on what services she's needing.) It's actually so bad that both my parents have decided to sit on their hands until their SSI/Medicare kicks in within the next year or two. And this is coming from people who had 150/mo and no more than 300 dollar deductibles at the turn of the millenium. THAT is how fucked up the current medical situation is in the US.
Their provider was Kaiser btw.
2. Verify your identify;
And how do you propose to do that?
3. Show you available health care plans in your area;
Unless the list is 100% based on geography, this is not a straightforward problem. Also, where does this list come from? What data describes a plan for comparison purposes?
5. Help you pay for it.
How much does it cost? I imagine that has a bunch of rules behind it.
The problem is that the website itself could be relatively simple, but there are layers and layers of systems behind it, and those cost a lot more to build.
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/defau...
Forbes? Really? REALLY?
sPh
You really don't believe me? Wow.
Pittsburgh. UPMC has decided that Highmark (and thus all Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurers) can no longer use their facilities because Highmark is threatening UPMC's near-monopoly status in Western PA. UPMC is trying to crush all competition in this area.
If you think being able to vote for the people and policies in government is worthwhile, why does your city have the problems you have described?
So you dislike the government but believe that it should be used to solve every company-vs-company dispute? Huh. No, the local government is finally trying to clean the mess up but they can't really do much to interfere with private contracts between companies. Turns out that anti-competitive behavior is mostly legal, and the state and federal governments haven't gotten involved.
These problems exist because being anti-competitive is a good way to make money. Seriously, you are blaming a company-vs-company problem on the government... how does that make any sense? If I get mugged, I should blame the police and not blame the mugger?
hatchet job using cherry picked emails to smear political opponents over now solved problems. nothing to see here, move along.
So you are ALSO saying that the information presented is incorrect ... that the people at HHS had NO idea that the site wasn't full of holes in terms of security and functionality. That the "cherry-picked" emails that show the administration knew the site was a train wreck are referring to something else, because the site wasn't a train wreck when it went live. Right? I see. So if that's incorrect, then what you're saying is that the administration did NOT know that the site was a train wreck. Which makes them stupefyingly incompetent.
So your idea of "nothing to see here" is either:
1) The administration knew exactly what a train wreck the thing was, but lied about it. Or...
2) The administration, at every level, was so foolish and incompetent that it had no idea whether or not the system was useless, and in lacking any sort of knowledge one way or the other, just assumed it was fine.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Politics? Darn, I should have read the article - I thought this was about http://obamacare.com/
My point is that democracy doesn't put competent people in charge most of the time. That's just the nature of the beast.
Do you think that anybody else who has been elected in the last 20 years would have pulled off Obamacare? Heck, put Obama in a different period of time and he probably couldn't have done as well as he did either. The forces that move the nation are far bigger than the president.
I just want to point out that all of your citations are from before the enrollment deadline. I think your latest post was from April.
How about something a little more recent?
In fact, if you follow the website attacks on Obamacare based on the number of people enrolled, you will find a deluge of articles leading up to April of 2014 and then...silence. You'll still find other attacks, but none based on the number of newly enrolled. Then, in May, you see a lot of articles saying, "Well, OK, a lot of people enrolled, but how many actually paid?". And then, based on insurance company data, it turned out that the people signing up for exchanges actually paid at a higher rate than the general population signing up for health insurance.
There are good reasons to criticize the ACA, but the number of people who have gotten coverage for the first time because of the law is not one of them.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You haven't worked much as a developer. Having built systems used by tens of millions of users I guarantee you that every time Amazon rolls out an update to the store or cloud software there's an ops person biting their nails hoping the system doesn't die. When Google released Gmail they only allowed each user to invite a certain number of friends in order to slowly ramp up the system. Writing any software that is made to have millions of users on day one is really fucking hard.
On top of that steps 2 and 3 require interacting with external systems who may also not be able to handle load well, and probably use a combination of buggy and poorly documented interfaces, and step 5 requires reading a bill so long that the people who voted for it didn't bother to read it. You're grossly trivializing the problem.
They are all from april 3 or later. The only deadline they were before is the unofficial expansion Obama gave to april 15 because of the failures in the rollout.
Here is something a little more recent but the open enrollment window is lapsed so your emphasis of more recent is a but misleading.
That is likely because the open enrollment window closed officially march 31 but was extended to april 15 or something like that for people who started to enroll but didn't finish on time because of the roll-out problems. I would assume the reason for a rash of articles discussing the coverage numbers would be relevant more around the time the enrollment window ended and not 5 months later when you have to either lose coverage otherwise obtained or turn a certain age requiring coverage.
Yes, it is funny how people progress their questioning along the time lines of something in order to reflect the current timeline and complaints get brought up as they appear in the time lines. Go figure.
Umm.. I never criticized the PPACA in these posts. I corrected a deluded person who didn't buy into reality. The numbers themselves seems to be what you think is criticism. I seriously think that any other president than Obama, and this entire situation would have had 10 times better of an outcome.
I don't know what the AC's situation is, but some plans that were once available are not. Some people can afford to have what Obama considered "junk plans" but can no longer get them and must pay higher rates for plans they don't want or including coverage for events that can't happen to them. What does a woman who has had her tubes tied (and would happily have an abortion if somehow the operation wasn't really successful) or a post-menopausal woman want with coverage for pregnancy?
It is almost always better to self insure portions of risk if you can reasonable do do -- why pay middlemen? Do you buy the "extended warranty" on every USB cable you buy from BestBuy or NewEgg? No, because you can easily absorb the cost of replacing it OR, perhaps, you only expect to be using it a few weeks by which time you are pretty sure you will accidentally leave it in a rental car or at a Starbucks by accident so you just don need long term protection.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
What I find ironic is that supposedly one big reason for Obama's electoral success was due to his team's deep understanding of technology, the internet, and social media compared to Republicans and yet they couldn't get a website running properly nor did they have the smarts to hire an industry leader to develop it.
And that is simply a problem with the law or hospitals not being willing to say "no". When someone presents with the types of problems that result in "very expensive ER visits rather than the much less expensive office visits", the ER should simply tell them to leave (and have them arrested for trespassing if they refuse) because they are not emergencies - if I call 911 because I want a pizza, they won't deliver it and I may well get in trouble if I keep calling with that request.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Think back to High School.
Remember the people who were popular?
What did you think about them?
Yep, that's what we have now.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Is 12 million the number this week? You can never tell. It goes up and down willy nilly depending on the talking head.
I bet the reality is they have NO CLUE how many people signed up, paid, or used it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Dearborn is supposedly the most Arab and muslim 'city' in the US (pop 100k, not much of a city). It's only 40% arab, and some percent of that group are Lebanese Christians (the earliest Arab immigrants to the area). Suppose there are some non-arab muslims though. I can't seem to find decent religious demographics in a quick search.
Canada has been sending a few anglo islam converts to go die in arabia lately. I have no idea what would inspire someone who grew up in Calgary or Winnipeg and got a proper first world education to go martyr themselves for Allah in the third world, but nonetheless it does happen on occasion. The amount is so minuscule it's lost in the noise though.
I suppose the same deal happens in the US on occasion.
Sent from my PDP-11
My numbers don't work. Now I'm not sure how I got that number. Perhaps I should use paper and pencil when calculating Obama-sized costs.
I'm going to show my work like this is fourth grade, so if I blew it again someone can easily point it out.
Direct federal cost: 1 300 000 000 000
people covered: 12 000 000
(roughly double the cost once you include premium increases, but let's start with just the cost we'll pay as federal taxes).
Cost:
1 300 000 000 000
_______________
12 000 000
Start dropping zeroes from both to get reasonable sized numbers for numerator and denominator:
1 300 000 000 000 dollars to cover
_______________
12 000 000 people
1 300 000 000 dollars to cover
___________
12 000
1 300 000 dollars to cover
________
12 people
108 333 dollars to cover
______
1 person
With premium increases, maybe $200,000 per person. So that's expensive, but not nearly as expensive as I had first calculated.
They have repaved the road in front of my subdivision 3 fucking times in the last ten years.
The water Department has torn up the street in front of my house twice trying to fix a water leak.
Every time there is a thunderstorm the power goes out.
Where is Augustus when you need him?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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:
ERs generally cannot turn away emergency patients or deny them care under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). Even if it appears that they have shown up in a non-emergency state, they still have to be assessed, and they are sometimes turned away for minor things, or at least given prescriptions that they have to pay for and which the hospital is not required to provide. The goal was to combat patient dumping that hospitals were doing for patients that couldn't pay even though they had been severely wounded or were in the midst of labor.
The issue the AC was talking about it a bit different, though. People with insurance (or some other means to pay) can generally go to a doctor when symptoms start to arise instead of only going to the ER when it becomes an emergency situation. This isn't someone who has a sore throat for a few days, but people who have cancer or other illnesses, and by the time the ER becomes a viable option, they're often too far along to treat, and can't pay for the emergency care they do get to stabilize them, which can require ICU or CCU. That cost then gets absorbed by the hospital and passed on to everyone else instead of a much lower cost being covered earlier on when early access might have saved the patient at lower cost.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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.
Well, when you consider that, by law, people were required to use this website to sign up for a health care plan before the government deadline, anything less than 100% is failure.
$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.
You forgot to include the economic costs of people having their hours cut so they no longer qualify for benefits and end up working two part time jobs without benefits to make ends meet. You left out the costs of businesses cutting jobs and locations, and refusing to expand, to avoid the fines, penalties, and costs associated with Obamacare. You left out the costs of people that had benefits but lost them due to companies being forced to drop benefits due to the unnecessary costs forced on them if they offer healthcare due to Obamacare. You left out the stifling of innovation due to the punitive costs and structure of the medical device tax. You forgot to include the cost of trying to force people to violate their conscience as Obamacare is doing.
And perhaps most important, you forgot to include the dangerous precedent of allowing the Federal government to directly force nearly everyone to go buy a very expensive service specified at the whim of the government and its bureaucrats.
What will you have to say if the next administration decides to enforce the militia clause by requiring every adult not convicted of a felony to purchase a $800 rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition and keep it locked in their homes, available for yearly inspection? Not much different than Obamacare, which is now enforced by the IRS. Well, actually that is probably a lot cheaper than most people's Obamacare bill.
. Most of the cost of Obamacare is recognizing costs that were, until now, hidden.
Obamacare is creating plenty of new costs all by itself. It is been a debacle and it has barely started. It will be inflicting plenty more damage on the economy and society in the years to come baring a repeal.
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
I wouldn't worry about it. Once a Republican is back in the Oval Office the MSM will be interested in journalism again so there will be more places to find corroborating stories. Besides, the MSM won't have much choice, they'll need a break - carrying all that water wears on the arms and Obama has called for more than most. If only his presidency had turned out as well as Jimmy Carters. If only ...
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
Do you think that anybody else who has been elected in the last 20 years would have pulled off Obamacare
They were smart enough not to try.
Heck, put Obama in a different period of time and he probably couldn't have done as well as he did either
Obama is hands down the worst president so far in my lifetime. Even Jimmy Carter was better and that's saying something.
The forces that move the nation are far bigger than the president.
What a lame excuse. President Obama is a pompous, preening and vainglorious windbag, in the best Harvard tradition, who doesn't know a damned thing about how to run anything, least of all the United States. The only bright spot is that the people who voted for him are still taking it on the chin economically while the rest of us enjoy our stock profits. Maybe they'll learn their lesson this time and think more carefully about it before they vote in 2016, but I'm not holding my breath. After all, the working class seem to be suckers for self imposed economic punishment with their recent election choices.
That the F-35 isn't a perfect warplane is well established. On the other hand the "Affordable Care Act" is absolutely useless against the latest Russian and Chinese combat aircraft. Even the elderly Iranian air force is more than a match for the ACA.
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
And then... you vote for them again, and AGAIN! Is this a face palm moment or not?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"War on Women" is a Democrat campaign scam - the Obama administration itself (and the Democrats in congress too) have been caught paying their female staffers less than their male staffers.
As for Issa's wealth... and whether it's "bad", let's see here:
Issa built his own wealth by starting and running businesses BEFORE going to Washington
The Kennedys (beloved by Democrats) all inherited their vast fortunes from their prohibition-era alchohol smuggler patriarch (whether you like that law or not, Joe senior was a criminal and the family fortune was built on crime dollars). This would be like somebody today building a financial empire on drug money, then after drug legalization pretending that the money was "clean" without regard to all the crime and dead bodies that contributed to the stash.
former Senator John Kerry (now SecState) got rich by marrying a rich widow.
Senator John McCain got rich by marrying a girl rich with inherited wealth
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) inherited a MOUNTAIN of money from a so-called "robber-baron" and then, in one of the planet's most hypocritical acts, struts around pontificating against the wealthy (while hanging-onto that inherited wealth and all the power it bought him).
Politics is an expensive game, so more and more of the members go there already wealthy, but most politicians who go to Washington NOT rich, (and spend MILLIONS on campaigns for jobs that pay $174K per year) somehow amazingly end-up quite wealthy after only several years. There are many ways this happens; members of congress, for one example, are exempt from "insider trading" laws (they can hear things about companies and markets, even in closed-door meetings, and then call their investors and place orders). Many of them sit on comittees where they direct taxpayer funds... and direct those funds to companies run by their relatives, like Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is an example, Former Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) and congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) (Who both have rich husbands who are investors - remember that insider trading exemption??).
A single payer system like Medicare/Medicaid?
Wow, yourself. You presented a plausible scenario with essentially no information, it is less than anecdotal evidence, indistinguishable from fantasy. With a city and the parties identified, it actually becomes meaningful and verifiable (or disprovable).
I didn't say government should be involved in any dispute between companies, so where do you come off claiming I advocate its involvement in all such disputes? You're trying to paint me as being extreme, and I may be, but on the other side from that you accuse me of being.
You paint UPMC as the villain, but I do not accept your contention. I think you've been watching too many Highmark commercials that have been attacking UPMC. What I see is two companies which are each involved in activities they should have been barred from by state (not federal) regulators. UPMC has been a healthcare provider for a long time, in 1998 it was allowed to offer healthcare insurance, Highmark has been a healthcare insurer for a long time and last year purchased West Penn Allegheny (which had sued both Highmark and UPMC for acting together to stifle hospital competition) to became a healthcare provider. I see two governmental agencies, the Pennsylvania Insurance Department and the Division of Acute and Ambulatory Care, failing to represent the interests of the people of Pennsylvania by failing to prevent the obvious conflict of interest involved in allowing integrated delivery system providers (particularly in companies which already dominated one aspect of that system). The solution is for government to take actions to eliminate its need for further involvement, and the state went the other way, reminiscent of our" too big to fail" banks.
You portray UPMC as the bully using its position to dominate the market for healthcare when Highmark is a much bigger company in both revenues and profits that dominates the region in providing health insurance, which purchased the plaintiff in the antitrust suit against it to kill the suit, and is in the catbird seat as it has the revenue up front and can direct business to itself for its customers who would have little choice while UPMC can merely cut off its nose to spite its face by not accepting Highmark insurance thereby turning away business, I hardly think that is the abusive position you suggest. It was not the local government that dealt with the mess, it was the Pennsylvania Insurance Department which should have prevented the issue 26 years ago.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
I work for the fed govt. Affirmative action/racial preferences is why fed govt cannot do anything. Blacks are way way overrepresented in fed govt employees, and many if not most of them do not do as much work as whites because the managers are afraid of racial discrimination complaints. Same goes for contractors.
What's the difference between Bush's illegal wars and Obama's illegal wars?
In terms of the economy, Obama has done at least as much damage over time, based on his own administration's charts, even. Remember all those rosy predictions?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Also, the "economic mess" at the end of Bush's term was in large part due to the collapse of securities based on bad mortgages that were encouraged by Democrat members of Congress, in particular Barney Frank. In particular, they wanted to call it racist to deny loans to people who clearly had no ability to pay them off, using the race card by claiming it was "redlining". And it is also possible that they expected the timing of these loans imploding to happen at the end of Bush's term. While you can blame Bush for our presence in the mid-east because he was actively leading that, it's a much farther stretch to blame the economy on him. However, I do put the blame that we are still in such a bad economy almost six years later on Obama's policies. And now he wants his own "illegal wars".
Do you think that anybody else who has been elected in the last 20 years would have pulled off Obamacare
They were smart enough not to try.
Great, then count yourself among the very small minority of people in industrialized nations who think that not having a universal system of health insurance is a good idea. The issue is that people complain about the execution of Obamacare, when in reality they objected to having any kind of solution to the healthcare problem at all.
No known organizational model puts competent people in charge most of the time. Even the strickests of meroticracies are subject to the Peter Principle, even if they somehow fail to promote people who are best at promoting themselves. Democracy is superior because it lets outright lunatics to be constrained and removed as well as succession handled without bloodshed.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It is almost always better to self insure portions of risk if you can reasonable do do -- why pay middlemen? Do you buy the "extended warranty" on every USB cable you buy from BestBuy or NewEgg?
No, but that's a useless analogy. There is NO medical equivalent of the USB cable I buy from NewEgg. Readily available, universally applicable, and most of all, cheap. There is nothing whatsoever in the US healthcare system that qualifies as cheap. Anywhere. Even the most trivial of routine checkups required by law (e.g. college admissions) has a cash price of hundreds of dollars. It only costs less than that if you (or your employer) has paid money into the protection racket called health "insurance." Which a) is not insurance and; b) serves as nothing other than a profit-taking gatekeeper to the services you actually want.
The Affordable Care Act, better known as RomneyCare, because that's the closest system that had previously been enacted in the US, is indeed a travesty. It's a giant giveaway to an industry that does not provide health care! The insurance industry. It's crony capitalism at its finest, sold to the American people with the carrot dangled by the Democratic party and the stick wielded by the Republican party. Only in America can a population of 300 million be fooled into paying so incredibly much for so very little.
If we were a civilized nation, we'd have enacted single-payer when Canada did in 1966 and we wouldn't be having this conversation. But we're not. We're blind and stupid and consistently vote against our own interests by voting for the interests of oligarchs.
And, that's a problem with our laws that should be fixed. If a competent PCP would not have referred the person to an ER, the ER doctor/PA/NP should be able to tell the person that their condition is not a medical emergency and advise them to see their primary care provider and the ER should suffer no more risk than the PCP would have. It should also be a crime to misrepresent your medical condition at an ER in order to get preferred or priority treatment (yes, this would rarely be prosecuted, but the occasional prosecution would deter people from doing it).
There is a good social reason for NOT completing treatment and diagnosis after evaluation determines the problem not to be an emergency -- the next time that person (and their friends and family) probably will not clog up the ER with what is obviously a cold or minor sprain that can be dealt with during normal business hours by their primary care provider.
The system, expectations, and culture is broken -- requiring ERs to act as PCPs is not the answer and the liability laws should reflect that.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Back in 2008, I only expected Obama to be as bad as Jimmy Carter. He surprised me by having all the badness of Bush (Dubya), Carter, and Nixon.
If Obama completes his two terms, then Richard Nixon should get an apology. Watergate would rank pretty low on the list of scandals if it happened now.
Most of them are pretty successful. One is even a Republican representative. *shrug* Good leaders are people who know how to take advantage of people smarter than them and build a grounds up organization with pragmatic decision making from top based on good data. That doesn't always happen because not everyone believes in the same end goal. That's the hard part.
Are you talking about the War in Iraq, which Obama boasted continuously about ending, despite loud criticism at the time that he was creating the conditions for what's going on right now with ISIS?
I wouldn't be boasting about that anymore, his related words are now one of those things his opponents publish on Twitter so as to illustrate how incompetent he is.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.