One in four HealthCare.gov enrollees may not be properly signed up BY TONY PUGH

WASHINGTON — An estimated one in four people who signed up for health insurance through the troubled HealthCare.gov website in October and November may not be properly enrolled in coverage due to technical problems with the electronic enrollment reports that the federal marketplace sends daily to each health plan.

Errors in these so-called "834" forms have been a vexing problem for the marketplace as it tries to correct a slew of malfunctions and glitches which have slowed enrollment and created a political firestorm for President Obama.

Last week, government officials announced they had fixed a software problem that was causing 80 percent of the errors with the 834 forms. And on Friday, Julie Bataille, communications director for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services(CMS), said officials believe nine out of ten 834s generated since December 1 are error-free.

But those fixes were too late for tens of thousands of people whose faulty enrollment information might keep them from gaining coverage on January 1, 2014.

The problems center around three types of enrollment reporting errors; the failure to generate an 834 form; issuance of duplicate forms and forms with incorrect data.

Via: McClatchyDC

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Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/12/06/210898/one-in-four-healthcaregov-enrollees.html#storylink=cpy

Obamacare's Perilous Protection Plan for Debtors by Michelle Malkin

"Uh-oh." That's the sound being uttered in doctors' offices and hospitals across the country as medical providers realize they're getting stuck with another bottomless Obamacare bill. While the White House desperately tries to pivot from the havoc wrought by the "Affordable Care Act," its hidden regulatory bombs keep exploding.

I heard about the latest problem this week from an eye doctor friend who received a letter from a Colorado-based insurer informing her that she's essentially on the hook for Obamacare's payment grace period for debtors. The optometrist is bracing for a flood of similar letters from other insurers. Like countless other independent providers, she's extremely concerned about the potential liability, uncertainty and fraud the rule imposes on her business.

Here's the raw deal: The Affordable Care Act created a 90-day grace period before insurers can drop patients who fall behind on premiums. So, delinquents who obtain tax-subsidized health insurance through an Obamacare health insurance exchange have three months to settle up their bills prior to their policy being canceled. As written, the law puts insurers on the hook for the grace period.

But the bureaucrats at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services decided to issue a rule in March making insurers responsible only for paying claims during the first 30 days of the debtors' grace period. Who's on the hook for the other two months? Well, customers are entrusted to foot the bills for additional services. But if they blow off the payments, it's up to physicians and hospitals to collect.

Via: Townhall

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Obama administration knew of key Obamacare delay in August, emails say

House Republicans released emails Friday that suggest the Obama administration knew as early as August that the small-business exchange tied to Obamacare would not be ready on time.

“Despite this knowledge, the Obama administration waited to finalize the delay until November 27, as Americans across the country were off celebrating Thanksgiving with their loved ones,” the Energy and Commerce Committee said in a press release.

The emails from between July 26 and Aug. 13 suggested the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services knew the federal insurance marketplace, or SHOP, that assists firms of less than 50 workers would not be available until mid-November at best. But they said at the time it would be ready Oct. 1 and did not announce any type of delay until late September.

One email from the lead vendor, CGI Federal, suggested a timeline that started with webinars on Oct. 1 and ended with the SHOP portal going live on Nov. 15.

“Can we sign this with blood?” Henry Chao, the project manager at CMS, wrote back.

Last week, the administration announced a one-year delay of the SHOP feature.

“As the paper trail broadens, we see more and more evidence that the administration was fully aware its signature health care law was not ready for prime time,” Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, Michigan Repbulican, said. “The documents we are now reviewing tell a much, much different story than what officials testified to Congress.”

Via: Washington Times

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HealthCare.gov team claims victory: 'We have met the goal'

The Obama administration claimed victory Sunday for making HealthCare.gov workable for the vast majority of users, a standard that will be tested as millions of people flood the site in the next three weeks.

Sunday marked the passage of the administration's self-imposed deadline for fixing the broken ObamaCare enrollment website, which serves consumers in 36 states.

The agency that oversees HealthCare.gov said "we believe we have met the goal" of making the system navigable for most people, but cautioned that more problems may lie ahead.

"Dramatic progress has been made," the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) stated in a report released Sunday morning. "[But] there is more work to be done to continue to improve and enhance the website."

The mixed message highlights the challenge facing the Obama administration as it seeks to ensure that millions can sign up for individual health plans online by the end of March.

HealthCare.gov debuted with serious technical problems on Oct. 1, plunging President Obama into a political firestorm that engulfed the White House for weeks.

The question now is whether the system can handle the high volume of user traffic expected in December.

Via: The Hill

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Officials say they're 'on track' to meet deadline for ObamaCare fixes

Obama administration officials said Saturday they were "on track" to have the problematic ObamaCare website running smoothly by their self-imposed Nov. 30 deadline.

"With the scheduled upgrades last night and tonight, we're on track to meet our stated goal for the site to work for the vast majority of users," Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokesman Aaron Albright told Fox News, in a statement.

Administration officials have since announcing the deadline qualified expectations and outcomes by repeatedly saying the site would work for the “vast majority of people.”

The Washington Post earlier Saturday reported the administration was prepared to announce Sunday that they have met deadlines for improving HealthCare.gov.

Official have said over the past week that the crash-prone site -- which launched Oct. 1 with disastrous results -- will now be able to handle 50,000 users at once. However, technicians failed to reach the deadline to fix at least some of the glitches, according to the newspaper

Via: Fox News

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HHS swapping Verizon with Hewlett-Packard for Healthcare.gov

 The Department of Health and Human Services has tapped Hewlett-Packard to replace Verizon Communications' Terremark subsidiary as the Web-hosting provider for HealthCare.gov, the federal health insurance marketplace that has had a troubled rollout since launching in October.

A spokesman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services division confirmed the move Wednesday but noted that the change in providers had been contracted well before the website launched.

(Read more: Nine Senate Dems push for Obamacare work-around)

"As we think about the overall performance and functionality of the site, redundancy is a critical part of our planning and we are working to ensure it in all aspects of the system," the spokesman said in an email to CNBC.

Dow Jones first reported the pending change in Web hosts.

Terremark's data center contract ends in March. HP won the right to take over the job this past July.

Via: CNBC

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Obamacare’s online SHOP enrollment delayed by one year

The White House will hold off on launching its online health exchange where small businesses can shop for coverage until November 2014, an HHS official confirmed Wednesday.

Small businesses will still have the option to purchase coverage through the new marketplace but will not be able to do so online. Instead, until next fall, employers with fewer than 50 workers will need to work through a broker or agent to buy health plans for their employees.

"We’ve concluded that we can best serve small employers by continuing this offline process while we concentrate on both creating a smoothly functioning online experience in the SHOP Marketplace, and adding key new features, including an employee choice option and premium aggregation services, by November 2014," the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services wrote in a Q&A distributed to health law stakeholders.

Health law supporters expressed frustration at the decision, but said they still support the overall goal of making it easier for small businesses to shop for coverage.

Via: Washington Post

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OBAMACARE WEB OFFICIAL: 60 TO 70 PERCENT OF WEBSITE STILL UNBUILT

Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO) asked Henry Chao, Deputy Chief Information Officer and Deputy Director of the Office of Information Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, about the status of the Healthcare.gov website. Chao revealed that 60 to 70 percent of the Obamacare exchanges website still had to be built. “We’re sitting somewhere between 60 and 70 percent,” Chao said.

“Let me get this correct,” Gardner asked incredulously, “60 to 70 percent of healthcare.gov still needs to be built?” Chao answered, “Healthcare.gov, the online application, verification, determination, plan compare, getting enrolled…that’s 100 percent there.” But he admitted, “There is the back office systems, the accounting systems, the payment systems, they still need to be built.”

Later, Chao claimed that there was 30 to 40 percent remaining to be tested.

Gardner asked how those systems would be tested. “In the same exact manner we tested everything else,” Chao answered. He stated that testing would be “ongoing” based on bill schedule.

Via: Breitbart

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Report: Feds spent $4.4 BILLION on state Obamacare exchanges

Data compiled and released Friday by the conservative organization Americans for Tax Reform reveals the amount of federal tax dollars funneled to states to implement Obamacare exchanges at $4.4 billion.

According to ATR, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services distributed the funds to states for a variety of “vague” purposes.

ATR pulled out grant purposes such as:

• “[P]reparations to demonstrate operational readiness”
• “Provide assistance to hire staff and consultants”
• “Continue and complete current planning and implementation efforts”
• “Secure staff consultants and expert resources and actively engage stakeholders”
• “Marketplace IT system design and development costs including IT consultants and privacy and security consultants”

States that did not end up setting up there own Obamacare exchanges also received money, according to ATR’s research.

Alabama for example, received $9,772,451 in two grants in 2010 and 2011 one for planning the exchange and the other to “support core staff, contracts, and activities around early implementation of the Alabama Health Insurance Exchange.”

Many of the states that did end up creating their own exchanges received more money than those that did not.

ATR’s tax policy director Ryan Ellis told The Daily Caller that it was not clear from CMS’ records what ended up happening to the money provided to states to set up exchanges that in the end decided not establish their own exchange.

“Presumably, [the funding] was to try to get those states to change their mind at an earlier stage of development,” Ellis wrote in an email.

Via Daily Caller

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U.S. Gives Illegal Aliens $29 Mil in Rx Meds

As if it weren’t bad enough that American taxpayers annually dole out huge sums to educate, incarcerate and medically treat illegal immigrants, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) spent tens of millions of dollars to give them free prescription drugs.

In all, CMS, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), blew $29 million to cover Medicare Part D prescription drugs for 4,139 “unlawfully present” individuals that did not qualify for the benefit, according to an HHS Inspector General report. This occurred during a two-year period between 2009 and 2011, according to the agency watchdog.

If you think that’s bad, earlier this year CMS paid $91.6 million to health care providers to cover 2,600 ineligible illegal aliens. A 1996 law specifically prohibits illegal immigrants from getting federal healthcare benefits such as Medicare and Medicaid yet it continues to occur, despite audits exposing the violations. How? Because CMS doesn’t have policies and procedures that could enable it to detect such “improper payments,” according to an HHS Inspector General report released in January.

That means Americans will likely continue paying exorbitant amounts to provide illegal aliens with services banned by federal law. The prescription scandal involves Medicare Part D, a voluntary program that requires qualified beneficiaries to enroll in the federally approved prescription drug plan by completing paperwork.

Supposedly CMS uses information from the Social Security Administration to verify eligibility, but the new audit reveals this: “CMS did not have a policy addressing payments for unlawfully present beneficiaries under Medicare Part D that was equivalent to the existing policy that covers payments for these beneficiaries under Parts A and B.” That means the agency doesn’t have “internal controls to identify and disenroll unlawfully present beneficiaries.”

In a nutshell, it appears that the Health Department’s watchdog is essentially saying that there’s nothing the feds can do about this. The lost money cannot be recovered and the inspector general simply suggests the obvious; to “develop and implement controls to ensure that Medicare does not pay for prescription drugs for unlawfully present beneficiaries.”

Via: Judicial Watch

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Obamacare Shouldn't Have Been Managed Like a Campaign

Another Sunday, another amazing reported piece on the rather amazing history of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges. You’ll have to read the whole thing, because summary won’t do it justice. But here are a few highlights:

• David Cutler, one of the top health-care economists in the U.S., wrote a memo to Larry Summers in 2010 warning him that the team in charge of implementing Obamacare was not up to the job. The memo makes it clear, though not quite explicit, that Cutler was writing to Summers, rather than someone on the health-care policy team, because the team had ignored his concerns. The memo is eerily prophetic: The key people were analysts with no experience in project management, technology, startups or the insurance business; responsibility was too diffused; the staff didn’t understand either the magnitude or the urgency of what they had taken on; and neither the Department of Health and Human Services nor the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to which most of the job had been delegated, had the personnel or technical experience to manage it well. The job of shepherding the project was given to Nancy-Ann Min DeParle, the director of the White House Office of Health Reform and a very wonky wonk who happens to be married to one of my favorite writers. According to one official, the president believed that “if you were to design a person in the lab to implement health care, it would be Nancy-Ann.”
  
• Parts of the implementation were hamstrung by the assumption that all the states would build their own exchanges, and because it was a draft bill that no one had expected to pass, it didn’t contain funding for federal exchanges or, apparently, for the policy wonks needed to put the law together. The Republicans, who continued to oppose the law to the apparent surprise of its architects and supporters, declined to provide funds on top of the nearly $1 trillion that had already been allocated (and, as I understand it, also restricted the ability of HHS to transfer funds from other areas). Funding instead had to be jerry-rigged and the job run out of CMS, which could get bureaucratic authority for the spending.
  
• But many of the bad decisions were designed to avoid Republican criticism. There was another reason that the exchanges' architects were tucked away inside CMS: to try to stay out of the public eye. Other such decisions followed. CMS carefully obscured the unwillingness of a large number of states to build exchanges -- despite the fact that this would greatly increase the complexity of the job -- lest Republicans seize on that fact. Then CMS kept extending the deadline to declare, in the hopes that some states would decide to build exchanges after the 2012 elections. The agency also refused to issue a bunch of regulations until after the election. But this is by far the most incredible:

Via: Bloomberg

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Exclusive: Marilyn Tavenner Did Not Speak Truth Under Oath, Says Victim of Security Breach

A top Obama administration official came under fire Tuesday after her congressional testimony conflicted with the account of a man at the center of the HealthCare.gov security breach.

Marilyn Tavenner, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, promised a Senate committee that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had reached out to Tom Dougall, the South Carolina man whose private information was exposed on Healthcare.gov.

That’s not true, said Dougall, who spoke to Heritage following Tavenner’s testimony.

Dougall has called HHS repeatedly since Friday. That’s when he learned his name, address and insurance eligibility had been released to a total stranger in North Carolina. Dougall used the problem-plagued HealthCare.gov in early October, but opted against signing up for insurance.

At a hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this morning, Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) told Tavenner about Dougall’s experience and asked her why no one from HHS has contacted Dougall:

Mr. Dougall has called [HHS] on several occasions but no one will call him back. Not a single person has taken the time, after having his information exposed, to even call Mr. Dougall back.

But Tavenner protested, promising HHS had already called him:

First of all, Senator Scott, we have reached out to Mr. Dougall several times, and we will find him, and we will follow up on his question.

When Scott offered to give Tavenner all of Dougall’s contact information, she said she didn’t need it and confirmed again that HHS had already reached out. Tavenner even told Scott “we have disagreement there” on whether Dougall had been reached.

Via: The Foundry

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