Patterico's Pontifications

1/22/2014

More ObamaCare Woes

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:43 am



As this newscast (h/t Hot Air) notes, CoverOregon has spent $200 million on their ObamaCare Web site, and the Web site still does not work. (Hot Air says nobody has enrolled through the site at all, but WaPo says the number is 18,000, which is still remarkably low.)

Meanwhile:

Target Corp. (TGT) said it will end health insurance for part-time employees, joining Trader Joe’s Co., Home Depot Inc. and other retailers that have scaled back benefits in response to changes from Obamacare.

About 10 percent of Target’s part-time employees, defined as those working fewer than 30 hours a week, use the company’s health plans now, according to an announcement posted on the Minneapolis-based company’s website. Target said it would pay $500 to part-timers losing coverage and a consulting firm will help workers sign up for new Obamacare plans.

Paging Juan Williams!

62 Responses to “More ObamaCare Woes”

  1. This is well worth reading.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-21/resolved-obamacare-is-now-beyond-rescue.html

    We should keep track of her predictions. MM is a sharp thinker, so I’m guessing it’s pretty accurate.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  2. [Target] said on its website that many part-time workers may prefer coverage from the health law’s exchanges, and that by offering them insurance, “we could actually disqualify many of them from being eligible” for subsidies.

    so Target wants to make sure it doesn’t screw up its employees ability to get subsidized by the welfare healthcare?

    I feel like I pay tax money for the gayest reasons.

    But Marco Rubio el Cubano Mas Authentico wants our olympic fairy whore athletes to pay NO taxes at all?

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fla-sen-rubio-introduces-bill-to-make-olympic-prizes-tax-exempt/

    I do not understand none of it.

    You know what I understand? Waffles make you fat. I totally get this. It makes for a lame mantra though but at least I understand it.

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  3. Last week my Doctor said I needed a catscan and the copay will be $150 under medicare. Prior to Obamacare, he said the copay was $50. Seniors begin to pay for this mess.

    bald01 (096663)

  4. Having a partially disabled friend who worked for Target, I can tell you that they were keeping him under the 20 hours a week he needed to qualify for their health insurance plan. Whether that was corporate or just the actions of the [insert slang term for the rectum here] who ran that particular store in Louisville, I do not know.

    The unamused Dana (3e4784)

  5. Obamacare was made for gays. And for sluts. We should call it Obamagaywhorecare.

    nk (dbc370)

  6. obamagaywhorewelfarecarewifsprinkles

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  7. Juan is hiding in the mens room to avoid comment.

    I predict that by fall the mandate will be repealed and Obamacare will just be an expansion of Medicaid.

    Mike K (cd7278)

  8. An expansion in Medicaid paid for with cuts to Medicare. Yeah, that will go over really well with senior citizens.

    JVW (709bc7)

  9. My understanding was that Oregon had indeed enrolled a lot of people.

    But only into Medicaid.

    SPQR (768505)

  10. 1. They won the debate by showing Obamacare was financially unstable, and said it was “beyond rescue” because the original vision of the law will not be fulfilled, and by the time everyone’s done “fixing” the original grand vision, not much of it will be left.

    Sammy Finkelman (4227f2)

  11. As a resident of Oregon, it is my understanding the 18,000 is indeed Medicaid enrollees and those were done by paper applications. There has not been ONE enrollment completed on the CoverOregon website.

    Trent (bafbcb)

  12. 3. Last week my Doctor said I needed a catscan and the copay will be $150 under medicare. Prior to Obamacare, he said the copay was $50. Seniors begin to pay for this mess.

    Comment by bald01 (096663) — 1/22/2014 @ 8:46 am

    I’m not 100% sure about your individual situation, but for the past two years Obama’s HHS Secretary has illegally been using a fund set aside to increase efficiency in demonstration projects instead to hide the increased Medicare costs from seniors who had Medicare advantage insurance. They had robbed that program to pay for Obamacare.

    As the GAO drily noted, Medicare advantage is not a demonstration project. They used the money for demonstration projects when no such thing was going on and that the misuse of the money had to stop. It did; Obama only intended to fool seniors long enough to get through the 2013 election.

    Obama just noted that Sebelius could use the money without Congressional authorization if she falsely claimed she was using it for the statutory purpose. So that’s what he had her do; lie.

    Something to keep in mind when Obama falsely claimed Congress had tied his hands and DoD couldn’t pay the death penalty to the families of troops who died for their country during the government slowdown. Congress said they had authorized DoD to do exactly that when it passed (and Obama signed) an emergency measure to make sure the troops got all pay and allowances.

    Both cases demonstrate Obama uses federal money solely to suit his domestic political interests, and he’ll illegally spend it or withhold it depending on how it serves those interests.

    Steve57 (663093)

  13. 1. ” MM is a sharp thinker”

    Ankle bite: MM used to be owned by Marilyn Monroe. Nowadays, I humbly suggest Michelle Malkin has taken over title.

    Perhaps Meggie Mac? Oh, wait,..

    gary gulrud (05efc5)

  14. Obama prescription? Fire up a fatty!!!

    Colonel Haiku (ddd528)

  15. 9. My understanding was that Oregon had indeed enrolled a lot of people.

    But only into Medicaid.

    Comment by SPQR (768505) — 1/22/2014 @ 11:11 am

    My recollection exactly. Not a single one of those 18,000 enrollees was for a private insurance plan.

    No doubt a great many of those enrollees had a private insurance plan before Obamacare. But they lost them, and they couldn’t afford the sky-high premiums for the newer, “more generous” health insurance they have to buy under the “Patient Exploitation and Unaffordable Insurance Act” without a subsidy. Which you can’t get if you qualify for Medicaid under the expanded coverage.

    Something to keep in mind when people say it’s “heartless” or “mean-spirited” that GOP governors didn’t expand Medicaid in their states. They didn’t screw people out of their better private insurance plans and force them into crappy Medicaid. They also didn’t screw their taxpayers with the increased burden of paying for it.

    Steve57 (663093)

  16. More on the coming splatter in Commercial Real Estate:

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/101353168

    The vacancies are growing, and growing and it’s about time banks start writing down these bad loans. Better tomorrow’s ain’t gonna come.

    gary gulrud (05efc5)

  17. Fox News had a story the other day about a woman who bought a policy on the exchange, and then found abetter one off the exchange and then was told she couldn’t get it until she disenrolled, and a very hard time trying to disenroll.

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/20/parallel-universe-woman-spends-6-weeks-trying-to-disenroll-from-obamacare/

    She finally drove to the Kansas City office’s of Blue Cross Blue shield, and got somebody;s attentuion and with the help of the insurance company, was able to disenroll.

    Asked for comment on Hill’s travails and what protocol should be for individuals having trouble getting out of an Affordable Care Act plan, a spokesman with the Department of Health and Human Services pointed back to the hotline.

    “Consumers should call the Marketplace consumer call center for assistance at 1-800-318-2596,” the spokesman said.

    1-800-318-2696 = 1-800 F1 UCK YOU

    Obamacare is not desgned for anybody making any changes, although that part is not intrinsic.

    Sammy Finkelman (4227f2)

  18. My insurance company here in CA is swamped with so many calls, the helpline says ” to the high level of calls..and long wait times….” and then hangs up.
    I have never had a problem with my policy during the annual rollover and this year I’ve got no card and my account comes back to my doctor as “inactive” even though the premium check has cleared.
    I don’t blame the insurance companies at all.
    Obama made them change my policy by adding female contraception and pediatric vision to it.
    Then all the ACA state websites were found to suck and my insurance company was poised trying to anticipate what to do with the mess the ACA was about to hand them… then the insurance gets the software programming equivalent of a giant bag of stinking poo (it’s a glitch!) left on the doorstep.

    I really despise the arrogance and condescension Obama uses to mask his incompetence.
    Pretty soon Obama is going to have to start speaking about himself in the third person… maybe invent an alternate persona like Nick Young’s “Swaggy P”

    steveg (794291)

  19. The old standard for incompetence in our host’s home state was that, “He couldn’t organize a two car funeral”.

    Obama and his minions can only dream of being able to organize a one bicycle funeral.

    Comanche Voter (12e67d)

  20. Last one out, turn off the lights.

    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/01/22/CA-bill-sick

    gary gulrud (05efc5)

  21. Now that Amnesty is on the calendar, next up Replace Obamacare.

    US Chamber of Commerce: ‘Failure is Not an Option’.

    gary gulrud (05efc5)

  22. We can blame 404Care, but our hearts know Walmart crushed them.

    http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/01/thanks-barack-target-to-drop-health-insurance-for-part-time-employees/

    gary gulrud (05efc5)

  23. 22. I said I thought this was about the 2014 election, not the 2016 election.

    There are three stories about three different New Jersey cities, and 3 possible reasons offered for Gridlock Gang to have created traffic jams in Fort Lee:

    1) Failure to endorse

    2) conflict with the State Senate over the New Jersey Supreme Court 3) a development in Fort Lee.

    The problem with the first two is that there wa sno attemmpt to endorse and nobody told the supposed targets anything.

    The problem with the last one is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to tie it to the blocking of the lanes.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  24. 25. ” I said I thought ”

    You say lots, and lots. I am not convinced. See Dadaism and automatic writing.

    gary gulrud (05efc5)

  25. the Hunt for the wild Stay Puft, has gotten very silly indeed, gary, cue zombie Graham Chapman, and it reminds me of the ‘contests of strength’ that the
    Huntress underwent in her last few months of office,

    narciso (3fec35)

  26. 28. I expect to see refugee caribou any day. High 1 F today, low tonite -22, high tomorrow -3.

    Shazzam.

    gary gulrud (05efc5)

  27. No more” Muskrat Love” as the ‘Captain and Tennille are getting a divorce.

    mg (31009b)

  28. A balmy -5 to 0 in Chicago. It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.

    How are you poor folks in California bearing up? It says it dropped down to 66 in LA today.

    nk (dbc370)

  29. Comment by nk (dbc370) — 1/22/2014 @ 5:32 pm

    Some people just have too much time on their hands.

    did you folk here about snowgate? apparently parts of Manhattan were not plowed along with others and some claim it is a payback to those who are rich.
    IDK

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  30. The number of people that have successfully enrolled in an insurance policy through CoverOregon is ZERO.
    WaPo reported numbers that enrolled by paper application.

    Icy (b22f5c)

  31. Here (N. California/S. State of Jefferson) it’s 65 F now and supposedly high of 77, low of ~26 last night, low of 43 tonight.

    Ibidem (707e5b)

  32. I bumped into a guy about a month ago who told me that he HAD had insurance through the parent company of Red Lobster, as did another person who worked enough to keep her health insurance available there, despite having another job elsewhere that paid better (but did not have HI available).

    Now they’re both uninsured.

    Ain’t Democrats wonderful? Let’s vote some more into office!!

    Smock Puppet, Gadfly, Racist-Sexist Thug, and Bon Vivant All In One Package (225d0d)

  33. Alright, this is now become intolerable and beezarre!

    The WeatherChannel is forecasting our High for Monday at -13. This is a change over the past hour from -8.

    No idea on their reliability, the head of the NIH says GMO dope is vastly stronger than in my day.

    SMOD, take me now.

    gary gulrud (05efc5)

  34. Last week my Doctor said I needed a catscan

    Comment by bald01 (096663) — 1/22/2014 @ 8:46 am

    Courtesy of Ibamacare, the only Catscan approved is!

    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gcA0ZuKGkI8/SolKmDfGreI/AAAAAAAADM4/jmw27HzlJj8/s400/Cat%2Bscan.jpg

    Yoda (557254)

  35. 32-nk- At 6:45 in the a.m. I will be humming that tune for the day.
    Thanks so much,nk!!!

    mg (31009b)

  36. Anyway, according to the anti-Winter-Olympics-in-homophobic-Russia crowd, I’m in a subtropical zone, two degrees latitude south of Sochi. When words mean whatever you want them to mean … is it really “cold” outside?

    nk (dbc370)

  37. 42. I get that the blocking Gulf of Alaska high is bequeathing us this weather and that the coincidental negative phases of both the PDO and AMO occur only once on the order of a century, and, moreover, the Arctic cold has more commonly settled over EurAsia, but..

    baby, it’s friggen, azz-cracking cold.

    gary gulrud (05efc5)

  38. BTW, if y’all were holding out hope China would save our sorry ‘tocks:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-23/china-bank-run-beginning-farmers-co-op-unable-pay-depositors

    Chicken Little? Uh huh.

    gary gulrud (05efc5)

  39. MD: I don’t think snowgate is really true, or at least I don’t know if other residential areas were favored. The New York Post made a big headline yesterday. de Blasio denied there was a problem until he went and saw.

    What happened here was that Bill de Blasio did a little bit too much planning. This snowstorm was supposed to start late Tuesday, but it started snowing around 8 am in the morning. The snowplows weren’t ready.

    The holdover Bloomberg Sanitation commissioner – whom de Blasio asked to stay on to deal with snowstorms – said that the plows couldn’t get to the sites because of traffic – which is just another way of saying they started too late.

    Or in Manhattan they did anyway. In Manhattan they must have concenta=rated in the business district, but in the other boroughs there is not such a high proportion of business streets.

    The first snowstorm this January started later than predicted, so it was OK.

    Meanwhile, there’s this other contradiction from de Blasio where he tells people to stay indoors (more the first time than now) but tells children to go to school. Only about half the children actually attended and many were shown movies and the like.

    This was probably because the city gets federal dollars for each day of school, so if they had one day less, they’d lose money, or, if they were going to make up the day anyway if they cancelled, then that they might have to pay the teachers double, and the teachers might lose a whole bloc of time off. They have off a whole week now in February.

    When you get down to the details, the budget is sometimes everything for some people.

    Sammy Finkelman (1892a7)

  40. 26 in Benghazi thread. Comment by MD in Philly (f9371b) — 1/23/2014 @ 11:30 am

    OT
    I’ve heard scuttle-but today that only the “front end” of healthcare(dot)gov is working, they “fixed it” enough so that people could access it and think they are signing up, but in reality the “back end” of it is still pretty nonfunctional.

    This hass been known since October.

    I guess that would explain why there seems to be a lack of solid data on who has signed up for what.

    That’s part of it.

    It still may not produce good 834 files. hey have to be reviwed manually. I dont know hiow much they fixed the back end by now, but it wasn’t actually able to enroll anyone in Medicaid.

    I don’t know if it is true, and I don’t know enough about designing websites to know any better.

    It’s simple. The back end is everything the web site to do to communiicate with the outside world.

    Sammy Finkelman (1892a7)

  41. To emphasize the point, the “back end” is the website. Any website. To claim the graphics or what have you is the website is ridiculous. It has to communicate with something that you the user doesn’t see to be a functional website.

    Steve57 (663093)

  42. You wouldn’t go to Amazon and say the website was great entirely independent of the fact you could or couldn’t buy a used book.

    Steve57 (663093)

  43. I guess if it’s that cold up on the north coast this guy isn’t putting many miles on his lil’ ol’ ’72 Nova these days.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Hv_jRQMv8

    This is like marijuana, cocaine, meth, plus every stripper you’ve ever met with a cherry on top

    Steve57 (663093)

  44. I know its not our America, but the music stopped today and Argentina is without a chair.

    Turkey, you’re not looking very nimble. Break a leg, eh?

    You know, sooner or later, people are going to start talking ‘Contagion’. Pass it on.

    gary gulrud (05efc5)

  45. Thanks for bringing it over here Sammy,

    So, when they “fixed it”, they did a better job of faking that it worked? So while people can sign in and think it is working, it isn’t, come there bill from the hospital next month.
    Is that about it?

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  46. there their

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  47. 47 Comment by Steve57 (663093) — 1/23/2014 @ 2:13 pm

    .To emphasize the point, the “back end” is the website. Any website. To claim the graphics or what have you is the website is ridiculous. It has to communicate with something that you the user doesn’t see to be a functional website.

    It needs both input and output. They concentrated on fixing the input.

    It’s maybe fixed, although you still can’t do things like terminate a policy, which the fixers figured, isn’t that necessary.

    If they were more honest they would let people know what they actually did, and what the web site could do.

    Sammy Finkelman (1892a7)

  48. Comment by MD in Philly (f9371b) — 1/23/2014 @ 3:53 pm

    So, when they “fixed it”, they did a better job of faking that it worked?

    Yes. The user interface now maybe works.

    So while people can sign in and think it is working, it isn’t, come there bill from the hospital next month.Is that about it?

    Well, some people may not know it, but the insurance doesn’t become effective until they pay the premium.

    People may know whether or not they paid the premium.

    The website is supposed to tell insurance companies that somebody signed up (and the insurance company can bill people) Maybe some of the state exchanges do that,

    The output of halthcare.gov is or was in too bad shape for the process of enrolling to be automatic. The insurance companies have to study it.

    Oh – and there are out and out mistakes. They even make mistakes about family members – they’e got wrong addresses, sometimes, so the insurance copany can’t get in contact with anyone. Maybe people did that in the process of trying to use the website.

    There is agrace period, or was, we’re past it now for January, and maybe for February. I’m not sure they extended the Feb 1 enrollment date ast Jan 15. They may have some days to actually pay.

    People may think they are enrolled in Medicaid – for which there is no bill to pay – but they are not. The last I heard healthcare.gov was not communicating wihh state Medicaid programs, so that acts only as a calculator. A state health eschange ma be different. But one thing about Medicaid: it is 90 days retroactive.

    Sammy Finkelman (1892a7)

  49. Friend of mine who’s wife works at Trader Joe’s got her check. It was taxed at 48%, leaving her with just over $250 to pay for her own insurance.

    Bruce (a889cf)

  50. Awesome site with great post !Continue and get for us.Your state and knowledge topic is amazing i read whole topics. I need impartial quite a bit. I learn many important subject by this site. Thanks admin for sharing eg nice site.

    Super Visa Insurance (a4f6db)

  51. Rushbo today had a number of clips of Chuckie Schumer’s latest address to the proles denouncing the H8rs among us for slandering the Big Government that clothes and feeds us and raises our children.

    The unbridled success of the ACA escaped mention.

    How unexpected!

    gary gulrud (e2cef3)

  52. My daughter has been wearing footie pajamas and drinking hot chocolate, but she refuses to discuss health insurance.

    I heard those clips on Rush.

    here is my idea, we need to start a campaign->
    President Obama is a Tea-Partier

    Basic ideas of the Tea Party are:
    1) You can’t keep spending more money than you have
    2) Legislators, who vote on bills, should read them first
    3) the government should be “transparent”.

    As a candidate in 2008, he ran on a Tea Party platform:
    1) He was critical of the increasing deficit under Bush and campaigned against irresponsible spending
    2) He said he would have all bills available on the web for review by the public for 3 days before a vote.
    3) He said “Sheriff” Joe Biden would keep an eye on the stimulus funds and post on the internet where the money went.

    All of those stands are perfectly consistent with the Tea Party, and a majority of voters actually voter for a Tea Party Platform.

    It’s just that once he was elected he has done the opposite.
    The American people need to be reminded that President Obama has pulled a bait and switch on them.

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  53. More ObamaCare Woes

    Anyone else besides me think it’s about damned time that someone put a final Whoa! to ObamaDon’tCare?

    Smock Puppet, Gadfly, Racist-Sexist Thug, and Bon Vivant All In One Package (225d0d)

  54. Yesterday, Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday CBS’s Face the Nation said that today some Republican Senators, including Tom Coburn, were going to come out with a list of principles or framework or something like that to replace Obamacare.

    They would a have something to deal with pre-existing conditions, the poor, and get rid of the Obamacare bureaucracy.

    Ah, here it is:

    WILLIAM KRISTOL, “WEEKLY STANDARD”: ….

    …So I think I’m not supposed to be revealing this, but since you asked me, I guess I’ll — I just have to say it. No, senator — senior Republican senators tomorrow are going to lay out the outlines of legislation, which I think will become real legislation that would be a conservative reform alternative to ObamaCare. It would deal with the preexisting condition problem. It would have tax credits for the poor. It would get rid of all the ridiculous bureaucracy and regulation limitations of ObamaCare.

    And I think it will — this will be Senators Coburn, who, Senator Coburn of Oklahoma, who’s retiring, very well respected; Senator Hatch, who is the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee and will become chairman of Senate Finance next year for Republicans who are in the Senate and Senator Burr, who’s senior on the Health Committee.

    So this is a serious piece of legislation. It could get, I think, pretty across the board support from Republican senators. There are some tweaks in it that there will be debates among Republicans and conservatives about how generous to be with the subsidies and with the tax credits and so forth.

    But I think it really will make it harder for the president and for Democrats to say the Republicans have no alternative.

    BOB SCHIEFFER: Will there be any chance that that could pass?

    KRISTOL: If Republicans win the Senate in November, I think in 2015, you could imagine a Republican Senate and a Republican House passing this. The Republican House might even pass it this year.

    And, again, then it’s up to the president whether he wants to abandon ObamaCare and sign on to a sensible health care reform.

    Sammy Finkelman (8b8667)

  55. Coburn says ObamaCare cost him coverage for cancer doctor

    “Coburn reportedly will pay out of pocket in order to keep seeing the specialist.”

    Which, to some Democrats means, he won’t be losing his doctor because of Obamacare.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)


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