Obamacare Insurance Workaround Reveals Law that Remains Unfinished, Unaccountable, and Unworkable

The latest tweak reveals how much of the health law's basic architecture is still incomplete.

In October, when it became clear that Obamacare's online enrollment system wasn't functioning, President Obama gave a speech in which he told people who wanted to sign up to contact call centers instead, or fill out pen and paper applications.

This week, the administration announced that it would be employing another manual workaround, this time for critical insurer payment systems. In this case, it's not because the payment system is broken. Instead, it’s because the part of the system that is supposed to both calculate how much money the government owes insurers in premium subsidy and cost-sharing payments and make the appropriate payments simply hasn't been built yet.

What hasn't been built can’t be used, but insurers need to be paid in order for the system to function. So the administration has decided to require insurers to estimate how much they are owed and submit payment requests manually. Later, after the systems are built, the plan is to sort out the details and figure out the exact amounts that should have been billed, then reconcile any differences.

Because it deals with the insurance industry side of the system, this temporary, technical tweak will probably garner far less attention than the ongoing problems with the consumer side of the federal exchange system. But the on-the-fly patch offers a revealing moment for the law all the same, one that highlights how unfinished, unaccountable, and unworkable the health law continues to be.

Via: Reason.com

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Kathleen “Unaccountable” Sebelius

For Health And Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, The Buck Stops At Anywhere But Her

HHS SECRETARY SEBELIUS WILL DENY ACCOUNTABILITY FOR OBAMACARE’S ROCKY LAUNCH

Before Congress Today, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Will Try To Deflect Blame Onto Contractors For ObamaCare’s Disastrous Rollout. “Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will tell a House committee tomorrow the site’s botched rollout was the result of contractors failing to live up to expectations – not bad management at HHS, as the contractors suggested. Sebelius blames a ‘subset’ of contractors who ‘have not met expectations’ for the website’s problems in an opening statement she’ll deliver Wednesday to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.” (Jonathan Easley, “Sebelius Blames Contractors For ObamaCare Problems,” The Hill’s Health Watch , 10/29/13)

• Sebelius’s Testimony Comes Just Days After She Said The “Majority Of People Calling For [Her] To Resign” Are People She Doesn’t “Work For.”“Sebelius, the Obama administration’s public point person on implementation of the new health care law, was in Phoenix amid calls for her resignation over the technical issues that have prevented people from signing up for coverage online. ‘The majority of people calling for me to resign I would say are people who I don’t work for and do not want this program to work in the first place,’ Sebelius said during a visit to the Wesley Health Center.” (Terry Tang, “Sebelius In Phoenix Amid Calls For Her Resignation,” The Associated Press, 10/25/13)

As Sebelius Shifts Blame Onto Contractors, She Won’t Offer Anything New Regarding The Problems That Have Afflicted ObamaCare

Secretary Sebelius “Will Read Almost Exactly The Same Testimony To Congress … As Another Top Obama Administration Official Offered Tuesday.” “HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will read almost exactly the same testimony to Congress Wednesday about the fumbled HealthCare.gov launch as another top Obama administration official offered Tuesday.” (Paige Winfield Cunningham, “Kathleen Sebelius Testimony More Of The Same,”Politico, 10/29/13)

• Sebelius’s Prepared Testimony “Matches Nearly Word-For-Word Testimony Delivered By CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner.” “Sebelius’s eight pages of prepared testimony for the House Energy and Commerce Committee matches nearly word-for-word testimony delivered by CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner to Ways and Means on Tuesday.” (Paige Winfield Cunningham, “Kathleen Sebelius Testimony More Of The Same,” Politico, 10/29/13)

Via: GOP.gov

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