Video: Big rush on ObamaCare, but how many will be insured?

As anyone could have predicted, the deadline for ObamaCare enrollment has prompted a surge in traffic to Healthcare.gov and state exchange websites. Mandate compliance will tend to focus attention, especially when the IRS could end up breathing down your neck for non-compliance. CBS News reports that record numbers of people signed up for insurance on the exchanges over the past week, but no one’s really sure if they actually will have insurance after January 1:

CBS calls these “enrollments,” but that’s actually the question. As CBS notes, insurers aren’t sure that the sign-ups will equate to actual enrollments for a number of reasons. Two of those reasons don’t get a mention in the report. First, the federal exchange and perhaps some of the state exchanges still have issues with their 834s, the electronic report that transmits enrollment data to insurers. The failure rate, by the administration’s own admission, is at least 10%. If the insurers don’t get the proper data, then they can’t enroll the customers. Second, the back-end subsidy payment system isn’t even in place, although the Obama administration’s workaround will be to have the insurers bill CMS for subsidy payments and to issue them without confirmation for a while. If enrollment data gets confused, customers might find their insurance cancelled even if they have been making their partial payments — unless insurers really want to go out on a limb and into the red on provider payments with short revenue.

Via: Hot Air

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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

NY Post: Obama Embraces Cruz?

Maybe Ted Cruz and Barack Obama are not as far apart on ObamaCare as we thought.

 

Before the government shut down, the Texas senator and his Republican allies in the House were denounced as extremists for wanting ObamaCare repealed in exchange for keeping the government going. Yet now it’s the president and his Democratic allies who want to delay, indefinitely, key parts of this law.

If the Democrats get their way, we have to wonder: What’s the difference between repealing the law and not implementing it?

In July, the administration put off the employer mandate for a year. A few weeks ago, the president said insurance companies could hold off canceling their old policies. And now he’s pushed back next year’s enrollment period so that it will run from November 15, 2014, to January 15, 2015. Not only does this extend the time on the back end, it conveniently moves the start date until after the mid-term elections.

Via: New York Post

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@BarackObama ‘extends’ application ‘deadline’ to December 23rd. #obamacare

This is actually not going to work, you know.

The Obama administration on Friday offered an extension of the current ObamaCare enrollment period — though not exactly what Republicans were seeking.

Federal health officials announced Friday afternoon that they’d give people another eight days this year to enroll in an insurance policy and still get covered by Jan. 1. Previously, people had to enroll by Dec. 15 to avoid any break in coverage and have insurance at the start of 2014. The administration, amid lingering problems with the main ObamaCare website, is now pushing that deadline to Dec. 23.

A couple of points: first off, that two week thing? Yeah, that’s not exactly a statutory thing: it’s just a good rule of thumb for how it can take for companies to process an application. Check with Megan McArdle, if you don’t believe me; but the point is that you now are asking the entire system to do in oneweek what normally would take two. Except that you’re not, because here’s the second point: December23rd?

OK. Let’s assume that John Q. Citizen gets in his application at 4:59 PM Eastern time, or whatever ‘just before the end of business hours’ is in this context, on Monday (days of the week are important in this discussion), December 23rd. Plop! It lands in either a digital or, and God help us, physical in-box. The next day, the in-box gets attacked by workers… until noon or so, because it’s Tuesday, December 24th. You know. Christmas Eve. So there’s the in-box, waiting. Waiting December 24th, and then waiting Wednesday, December 25th, which is Christmas Day. Let us assume – to be sporting about it – that the person who owns the in-box will be, like Bob Cratchett, in all the earlier the next day. That gives the in-box opportunities to get emptied for the 26th (Thursday) and 27th (Friday)… and then it’s the weekend. So anything that doesn’t get done by then will have to wait until December 30th (Monday). Anything that doesn’t get done then? Well. December 31st is New Year’s Eve.

Via: Red State

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