Republicans know they're in trouble once the website problems are solved

[schmuckley]

Are you guys talking about a website that needs to be fixed or the collapse of Western civilization?

both..as one may lead to the other.

 

[Svnla]

Even if the website works seamlessly today, other bigger problems lie ahead.

Middle income consumers are starting to get hit with sticker shock as previously low-priced plans get canceled and replaced with higher-dollar coverage. Stories of consumers getting plans canceled directly contradict Obama's promise that people who like their plans could keep them under the new law.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/crisis-time-obamacare-130406721.html

 

[boomerang]

Even if the website works seamlessly today, other bigger problems lie ahead.



http://finance.yahoo.com/news/crisis-time-obamacare-130406721.html

Articles like that highlight why I really hope there is no delay in Obamacare. I say keep it rolling and let it work its magic. Unfortunately, there is bi-partisan support for delaying it right now. I guess once Valerie Jarrett makes her decision we'll know how it's going to play out.

 

[TerryMathews]

Even if the website works seamlessly today, other bigger problems lie ahead.



http://finance.yahoo.com/news/crisis-time-obamacare-130406721.html

Yes. This was common sense to anyone with a brain yet some cheerleaders on here swear its not true to this day.

News flash: this law penalizes young healthy people to the benefit of old and frail or sickly people.

 

[Lash444]

Can we get someone to give an honest answer to these questions:?

How much did the shutdown cost?
How much did the Iraq war cost?
How much did these two things cost per day?

Now we shouldn't condone the fact that money was probably flushed down the toilet. Could it have been managed better? If I was a betting man, I would say "Indubitably". It just amazes me that you guys make this huge stink over how big of a money sink this 465 million was. 465 million sounds like a huge number, doesn't it?

At least the website money was going towards something that provided a benefit. Counting your nickels and dimes, while you throw out the dollars.

 

[Bowfinger]

Can we get someone to give an honest answer to these questions:?

How much did the shutdown cost?
How much did the Iraq war cost?
How much did these two things cost per day?

Now we shouldn't condone the fact that money was probably flushed down the toilet. Could it have been managed better? If I was a betting man, I would say "Indubitably". It just amazes me that you guys make this huge stink over how big of a money sink this 465 million was. 465 million sounds like a huge number, doesn't it?

At least the website money was going towards something that provided a benefit. Counting your nickels and dimes, while you throw out the dollars.

The shutdown reportedly cost about $160 million per day, or over $2 billion total.

The Iraq invasion is reported to have cost $2 to $3 trillion, i.e., $2,000 billion to $3,000 billion. I don't know off the top what that translates to as a daily cost.

That said, as an IT leader, I do think $465 million for the software development sounds excessive. Based on what I know about the system and a whole lot of assumptions, I would think it should have cost no more than a third of that. So IMO, it was a lot of wasted money, but yes, it is a drop in the bucket compared to some other examples of government waste. At least HealthCare.gov gives us something to show for the money, whereas the shutdown was $2 billion flushed straight down the toilet.

 

[TerryMathews]

The shutdown reportedly cost about $160 million per day, or over $2 billion total.

The Iraq invasion is reported to have cost $2 to $3 trillion, i.e., $2,000 billion to $3,000 billion. I don't know off the top what that translates to as a daily cost.

That said, as an IT leader, I do think $465 million for the software development sounds excessive. Based on what I know about the system and a whole lot of assumptions, I would think it should have cost no more than a third of that. So IMO, it was a lot of wasted money, but yes, it is a drop in the bucket compared to some other examples of government waste. At least HealthCare.gov gives us something to show for the money, whereas the shutdown was $2 billion flushed straight down the toilet.

Should've cost $0 as it should be funded by the companies its selling services for.

 

[BlueWolf47]

Should've cost $0 as it should be funded by the companies its selling services for.

Im glad your trying to be rational for once.



/s

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

The Republicans aren't in trouble and neither are the Dems. Whatever problems exist in implementing the websites are technical. What will bite people is how the ACA performs beyond these glitches. For example, the sign up rates are difficult to determine, but the ACA depends on significant numbers of people signing up. If that doesn't happen then there's a problem. "Hope and Change" isn't going to work. It is predictable that not everyone will do what they are told and that's not their fault. It's the blame of those who's hubris would not allow for that eventuality. Still that's in the future, and no one knows how many will ultimately participate. Then there's performance. If it works, then the Reps are in trouble. If it doesn't the Dems still win at least in part. They might get some grief, but in the end they will gain more control because they will have destroyed any chance of a non ACA based alternative. They will have some variant of the ACA no matter how bad it is.

Not in this equation is the citizen, who really doesn't matter much anymore.

 

[1prophet]

This will probably do to ACA (obamacare) what the republicans couldn't.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs...ir-health-plans-because-obamacare_764602.html

Millions of Americans Are Losing Their Health Plans Because of Obamacare

John McCormack

October 23, 2013 1:59 PM

While the Affordable Care Act was making its way through Congress in 2009 and 2010, President Obama famously promised the American people over and over again that if you like your health plan, you can keep it.
“Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you,” Obama said at one rally in July 2009. “First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.”



But the president's promise is turning out to be false for millions of Americans who have had their health insurance policies canceled because they don't meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act.
According to health policy expert Bob Laszewski, roughly 16 million Americans will lose their current plans because of Obamacare:

The U.S. individual health insurance market currently totals about 19 million people. Because the Obama administration's regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal. The rules are very complex. For example, if you had an individual plan in March of 2010 when the law was passed and you only increased the deductible from $1,000 to $1,500 in the years since, your plan has lost its grandfather status and it will no longer be available to you when it would have renewed in 2014.

These 16 million people are now receiving letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must re-enroll in order to avoid a break in coverage and comply with the new health law's benefit mandates––the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases.
​

Kaiser Health News called up a few insurers around the country and found that hundreds of thousands of Americans have already received cancellation notices.


"[T]he cancellation notices, which began arriving in August, have shocked many consumers in light of President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their plans if they liked them," according to Kaiser Health News reporters Anna Gorman and Julie Appleby.


"Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state.



Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent," Kaiser reports.


"Blue Shield of California sent roughly 119,000 cancellation notices out in mid-September, about 60 percent of its individual business. About two-thirds of those policyholders will see rate increases in their new policies, said spokesman Steve Shivinsky."

In order to make a healthcare omelet it seems some(millions) of eggs will be broken, hopefully it tastes like an omelet and not a shit sandwich.:hmm:

 

[TerryMathews]

Im glad your trying to be rational for once.



/s

How do you figure?

 

[MagickMan]

That's because he's not a conspiracy theorist.

I said Obama wasn't stupid, but his pawns (like yourself) are idiots.

 

[Matt1970]

This says differently:





http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/10/24/how-much-did-healthcare-gov-cost/

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/24/the-myth-of-the-634-million-obamacare-website/196585

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/25/fox-news-only-overestimated-healthcaregov-cost/196603

Note that Fox News knew CGI Federal hadn't been paid anywhere near that much two weeks earlier:

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/10/11/just-how-much-does-healthcaregov-cost/

Yet here we have drones parroting "$630 million," and, "a billion."
All it takes is for the conservative media sphere to repeat the same lie for their listeners to have no doubt in their minds that it's true.

So the GOP created the website problems? Like I said, create them? Hardly. Blow some of them out of proportion? Sure.

 

[boomerang]

This will probably do to ACA (obamacare) what the republicans couldn't.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs...ir-health-plans-because-obamacare_764602.html

In order to make a healthcare omelet it seems some(millions) of eggs will be broken, hopefully it tastes like an omelet and not a shit sandwich.:hmm:

Let's use Obama's analogy of a product launch. With this kind of funding, with a development period this long and with these results, well, the shareholder's would be out for blood. Heads would roll. But this is government, so it's not a problem. We've got the leftist rationalizations right here in this thread. Faced with an utter failure, they look for comparisons under the guise of "fairness" which is their ultimate fallback for all mistakes Democrat. The first to garner blame of course being Republicans.

We wanted this oh so badly and it fell flat on its face but look how it compares to this! It's like some kind of mass psychosis.

They're running the country. Into the ground. And they think it's not their fault.

 

[boomerang]

Dem Party Is Fucked

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...k-20131027,0,4888906,full.story#axzz2j0w1DsZm

Fullerton resident Jennifer Harris thought she had a great deal, paying $98 a month for an individual plan through Health Net Inc. She got a rude surprise this month when the company said it would cancel her policy at the end of this year. Her current plan does not conform with the new federal rules, which require more generous levels of coverage.

Now Harris, a self-employed lawyer, must shop for replacement insurance. The cheapest plan she has found will cost her $238 a month. She and her husband don't qualify for federal premium subsidies because they earn too much money, about $80,000 a year combined.

"It doesn't seem right to make the middle class pay so much more in order to give health insurance to everybody else," said Harris, who is three months pregnant. "This increase is simply not affordable."

Pam Kehaly, president of Anthem Blue Cross in California, said she received a recent letter from a young woman complaining about a 50% rate hike related to the healthcare law.
"She said, 'I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it,'" Kehaly said.

Cue tiny violins: Liberal Reagan daughter Patti Davis asks Obama why she’s losing her health insurance; Update: Tweet deleted

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Obamacare is the gift that will keep giving and giving and giving.

 

[shira]

Honestly, can someone please explain to me what they think is so damned complicated about delivering insurance and health care under the ACA regimen? It's not rocket science. Yes, there will be a system in place the over-charges on premiums for the younger and healthier to make insurance more affordable for the older and sicker. So younger people will gripe and older people will feel more secure. But anyone with half a brain knew this from day one.

Beyond those simple facts, why are righties predicting "disaster?" Do righties think society wasn't already subsidizing the costs of the un- and under-insured via higher health-care costs paid by everyone else? The ACA just attempts to accomplish that same result (subsidizing those who can't afford [or can't obtain] insurance under the status quo) in a less chaotic, more predictable way.

 

[werepossum]

From the Republicans: We told you it needed to be delayed.

From the Democrats: You better hope we don't fix our cluster-fuck website or you are going to look silly.

LOL +1

if you're talking about the test strip thing it is the correct call and it is how you would spend your own money. Some companies have been over charging for decades. Look at WalMart. Test strips can range from $9 for 50 up to $77 for 50. Yes the more expensive strips are more accurate but not that much more accurate. The higher priced strips are mainly there for people with prescriptions to pay extra for a similar result and not notice the increased cost per strip.

One of my partners is diabetic and bought the WalMart meter rather than the expensive-strip meter the doctor prescribed. When the doctor found out he went ballistic, but my buddy insisted that both meters be checked against the lab equipment. Turned out that the WalMart meter was actually more accurate (as measured by the lab blood work equipment) than the prescribed meter with the expensive strips. Sometimes you get what you pay for and sometimes you get what they sold the doctor.

LOL if that's true thats insane. That's 1/10th the cost it takes our country to build the next ballistic missile submarine, but that total process of design and build takes 20-25 years!!!

Sounds like another epic waste of our tax money. Dems can't get a system to work right that they had over 3 years to perfect, and the Repubs can't stop bitching about it. God damn our government sucks.

Well said.

 

[boomerang]

Obamacare is the gift that will keep giving and giving and giving.

I'm going to be really disappointed if they delay it. Forward!

 

[werepossum]

Honestly, can someone please explain to me what they think is so damned complicated about delivering insurance and health care under the ACA regimen? It's not rocket science. Yes, there will be a system in place the over-charges on premiums for the younger and healthier to make insurance more affordable for the older and sicker. So younger people will gripe and older people will feel more secure. But anyone with half a brain knew this from day one.

Beyond those simple facts, why are righties predicting "disaster?" Do righties think society wasn't already subsidizing the costs of the un- and under-insured via higher health-care costs paid by everyone else? The ACA just attempts to accomplish that same result (subsidizing those who can't afford [or can't obtain] insurance under the status quo) in a less chaotic, more predictable way.

The vast majority of Americans took President Obama at his word that the average family would save $2,500 and if one liked one's existing plan one could keep it. I suspect that only the people with full, functioning brains (what Moonie would call a defect) knew at the time that he was lying.

 

[boomerang]

Honestly, can someone please explain to me what they think is so damned complicated about delivering insurance and health care under the ACA regimen? It's not rocket science. Yes, there will be a system in place the over-charges on premiums for the younger and healthier to make insurance more affordable for the older and sicker. So younger people will gripe and older people will feel more secure. But anyone with half a brain knew this from day one.

Beyond those simple facts, why are righties predicting "disaster?" Do righties think society wasn't already subsidizing the costs of the un- and under-insured via higher health-care costs paid by everyone else? The ACA just attempts to accomplish that same result (subsidizing those who can't afford [or can't obtain] insurance under the status quo) in a less chaotic, more predictable way.

Although you always take public transportation, you find it's mandated that you must get a new car. Your neighbor has found that his car is no longer allowed on public roads. You want a small sporty two-seater with a high horsepower engine, great handling and few creature comforts. He wants a big car with lots of amenities and a great ride that will seat five comfortably.

You both go to the car dealer in town to find that there is only one model available. It fits neither of your needs very well. It's a four door sedan with a four cylinder and it only comes in pink.

Yours is going to cost $38K and his is going to cost $29K. Oh, and you have to buy it.

Are you good with that?

 

[Zaap]

You and your neighbor both must get a new car. You want a small sporty two-seater with a high horsepower engine, great handling and few creature comforts. He wants a big car with lots of amenities and a great ride that will seat five comfortably.

You both go to the car dealer in town to find that there is only one model available. It fits neither of your needs very well. It's a four door sedan with a four cylinder and it only comes in pink.

Yours is going to cost $38K and his is going to cost $29K. Oh, and you have to buy it.

Are you good with that?

Actually, they quickly run out of cars, but not to worry. Just sign the list and as soon as a a few crappy pink four doors become available again, you can come down and stand in line for one. Oops. Computer lost the list. No worries. Just come on down and sign up again, should just be a few more weeks of wait.

 

[werepossum]

Although you always take public transportation, you find it's mandated that you must get a new car. Your neighbor has found that his car is no longer allowed on public roads. You want a small sporty two-seater with a high horsepower engine, great handling and few creature comforts. He wants a big car with lots of amenities and a great ride that will seat five comfortably.

You both go to the car dealer in town to find that there is only one model available. It fits neither of your needs very well. It's a four door sedan with a four cylinder and it only comes in pink.

Yours is going to cost $38K and his is going to cost $29K. Oh, and you have to buy it.

Are you good with that?

Actually, they quickly run out of cars, but not to worry. Just sign the list and as soon as a a few crappy pink four doors become available again, you can come down and stand in line for one. Oops. Computer lost the list. No worries. Just come on down and sign up again, should just be a few more weeks of wait.

LOL X2.

Obamacare - it's the Zil of health insurance, good for all citizens.

 

[dank69]

Although you always take public transportation, you find it's mandated that you must get a new car. Your neighbor has found that his car is no longer allowed on public roads. You want a small sporty two-seater with a high horsepower engine, great handling and few creature comforts. He wants a big car with lots of amenities and a great ride that will seat five comfortably.

You both go to the car dealer in town to find that there is only one model available. It fits neither of your needs very well. It's a four door sedan with a four cylinder and it only comes in pink.

Yours is going to cost $38K and his is going to cost $29K. Oh, and you have to buy it.

Are you good with that?

The problem with your analogy is that when you need a car and you don't have one, the only person that is fucked is you. Meanwhile when you get really sick or injured and you don't have insurance, everyone else is fucked along with you.

 

[dank69]

That looks like Karl Rove and every other conservative right up until election night was over in 2012. Conservative solution? Keep on keepin' on.