A Conservative’s Experience Enrolling in Obamacare

With all the hoopla surrounding Obamacare, I decided to call and sign up for its implementation in our state, Covered California. I dialed 1-800-300-1506. Jose answered.

He was polite but rattled when I told him I’d rather talk to him, a human, than trust my most personal information to a problematic state government computer. He attempted several times to get me to sign up online, but I held firm. I did not want to create an online account.

Jose asked for my salary information, my age, and my husband’s information. He asked me for information from our tax returns, and if I was a citizen. Rather than provide my actual income, I used $40,000 as my annual salary, to see if I would qualify for a subsidized plan.

After running a few calculations, Jose suggested I dump my husband, who gets Medicare, from the plan to lower my income, and possibly qualify for government subsidies. “Your annual income is just below the boundary — you may qualify for assistance,”

Then the awkward sales pitch began.

Silver, blue and gold

There are four levels of health plans available, from cheapest to most expensive: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum.

While Jose was explaining the metallurgy of the health plans, the 1982 Bad Company song, “Silver, Blue and Gold,”  popped into my head:

In the beginning
I believed every word that you said
Now that you’re gone
My world is in shreds

Jose skipped right over the Bronze- and Silver-level plans and tried hard to sell me on a Gold-level health plan. He said the Bronze-level health plan had the highest monthly premiums, but was reluctant to tell me what they were.

Via: California Political Review

Continue Reading...

[VIDEO] OBAMACARE ENROLLMENT NUMBERS BRUTALLY LOW

On Wednesday, the Obama administration finally released itsfirst numbers for Obamacare health insurance exchange enrollment dating from October 1 to October 31. The numbers were not pretty: just 106,185 people “selected a Marketplace plan” using the exchanges, after the administration predicted that 494,620 people would do so.

Even the Associated Press was forced to lament the “dismal numbers.” The federal health care exchange signed up less than 27,000 people. Meanwhile, nearly 7 million people are expected to lose the insurance plans President Obama said they could keep. So far, five million have lost their insurance.

The state numbers were far from encouraging. Overall, the states signed up 79,391 people. California led the way with 35,364 people who have selected a plan (as opposed to 1 million who have lost a plan); New York came in second at 16,404 (at least 100,000 New Yorkers have lost their insurance); Washington came in third at 7,091 (290,000 have lost their insurance in Washington); and Kentucky came in at 5,586 (280,000 lost their insurance in Kentucky).

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading....

CARNEY: OBAMACARE ENROLLMENT WILL BE LOW

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading Comments.....

Sharyl Attkisson: Insurance 'Death Spiral' Could Cause ObamaCare's 'Collapse'

Besides facing a "credibility death spiral" on the issue of ObamaCare, as political director John Dickerson recently put it, Sharyl Attkisson pointed out on Tuesday's CBS Evening News that the very structure of the so-called reform could encounter a separate "death spiral" due to the "enrollment fiasco" surrounding HealthCare.gov.

Attkisson cited unnamed health care analysts, who predicted a doomsday scenario for President's Obama's supposed signature achievement: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]

SHARYL ATTKISSON: The 23 small co-ops across the country that are part of Affordable Care are intended to provide competition. As they adjust to stay afloat, some analysts worry that ObamaCare, as designed, might not. Their biggest fear is that with the website problems, more of the enrollees will be the sickest and most motivated. If that happens,insurers would have no choice but to raise premiums, and that could cause more healthy customers to flee. In the insurance industry, it's known as the 'death spiral', and experts say if that were to come to pass, the ObamaCare business model would collapse.

The CBS correspondent spotlighted one of these health insurance co-ops – Evergreen Health of Maryland – and noted how the CEO had to "blow up his business plan" because of HealthCare.gov's numerous failures. Evergreen Health had originally focused on signing up individuals, but is now pursuing small businesses "the old-fashioned way, with phone calls and TV ads."

Later in the segment, Attkisson revealed a sobering piece of information: the co-op's CEO stated that "he only knows for sure of a dozen people signing up for Evergreen so far". The journalist then added, "for context...the Affordable Care law is counting on signing up seven million people over the next six months. That averages to about 39,000 people a day.

Via: Newsbusters

Continue Reading.....

Alaskan Company Suspends Obamacare Enrollments, Cites Faulty Subsidy Calculator

Enroll Alaska, an organization that was specifically created to aid Alaskans in enrolling for Obamacare, has thrown in the towel, at least for the time being.

As the Peninsula Clarion reports, Enroll Alaska has been able to enroll a grand total of only three people since the launch of the health-insurance marketplaces on October 1. It has now given up entirely on that goal, at least until Healthcare.gov, the federal health-care exchange, gives Alaskans accurate figures on the subsidies they’re eligible for.

According to Enroll Alaska, the exchange is telling people that they’re eligible for a subsidy $100 less than what they actually qualify for. Spokeswoman Tyann Boling said that Enroll Alaska discovered the issue after comparing manual calculations with those generated by the website. 

Alaska isn’t the only state to have difficulties with a subsidy calculator. Washington’s state-run health-care exchange, Washington Healthplanfinder,overestimated subsidies for approximately 8,000 people. 

Via: NRO

Continue Reading.....

CBS: Obamacare Enrollment Trends Threatening Program’s Structure

 

A report on CBS This Morning reveals enrollment trends in many of the 15 states with their own health insurance insurance exchanges show more people are enrolling in Medicaid than are buying private health insurance.

If that trend continues, there will not be enough healthy people buying insurance for the system to work.

Via: WFB

Continue Reading.....

Photo Shows Just One Person at S.C. Obamacare Enroll Event

A photo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon shows an empty room at a South Carolina event meant to educate the public about the benefits of enrolling in Obamacare.

The two-hour event, held in North Charleston, S.C., explained how people can enroll in the health care exchanges implemented as a part of the Affordable Care Act, according to the event synopsis.

The rollout of the exchanges has been deeply troubled, with extensive wait times, errors, and insurers reporting customers calling the experience “just awful.”

Via: WFB

Continue Reading.....

FAKE OBAMACARE INSURANCE EXCHANGE SITES ALREADY SPOTTED

Amid numerous reports of ObamaCare exchange difficulties, Internet cloud security company Trend Micro has reported that they have already seen spam targeted to words such as “Medicare,” “enrollment,” and “medical insurance.” The company reports that some of the spam variants appear “professional enough to fool some users into opening the email and clicking the links in these messages.”

According to SecurityWatch magazine, Trend Micro’s threat communications manager Christopher Budd said “deep problems with the Marketplace websites could make things much worse.”

Budd wrote last week that due to the way the online registration for ObamaCare will work, and to the type of information people must enter online to obtain health insurance coverage, “there’s a real risk of a perfect storm that can make this process a bonanza for identity thieves and cybercriminals:”

The root problem is that the Health Insurance Exchange isn’t made up of a single, authoritative site where people can go and register for coverage. In addition to the Federal site, people can apply for coverage at sites run by individual states. Then, within each state, there can also be legitimate third-party sites that provide assistance and even broker coverage.

When a person starts looking through sites to find one, at this time, they’re faced with the challenge that there’s no official marking or labeling that they can look at on a site to know that it’s an officially sanctioned site. A survey of state and third-party sites also shows that official sites aren’t required to provide the ability to verify the site using SSL: many of them don’t provide it for site verification at all, though the Federal site does. As people look for health care exchanges, they’re going to be faced with potentially hundreds or thousands of sites that claim to be legitimate but won’t be able to easily verify that claim.

Budd said that, in addition, when applying for healthcare coverage, people must submit all of their most sensitive personal data – not only for themselves, but also for their entire family.

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading....