RNC petitions administration for Obamacare enrollment numbers

The Republican National Committee is sending a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Monday. The GOP body is seeking information on the number of Americans who have successfully enrolled in the Obamacare exchanges through Healthcare.gov.

The web portal to the Obamacare exchanges has been plagued by problems since its opening on Oct. 1. To date, the Obama administration has failed to release official enrollment numbers.

In its FOIA, the RNC specifically seeks:

• “Any and all data recording each successful purchase of a health insurance policy…on any of the Affordable Care Act exchanges administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services…”
• “Any and all documents or communications, including but not limited to relevant emails and letters, regarding the collection of successful enrollee data on or after October 1, 2013…”

An RNC spokesman explained to The Daily Caller that the GOP body has only issued a few FIOAs this year and only does so when it believes the administration is not being forthcoming with important information.

“[Health and Human Services Secretary] Kathleen Sebelius and the Obama administration spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on this website, but Americans trying to use it have gotten little more than error messages and crashing web pages,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement.

“It’s important for Americans to see these numbers because they illustrate just how terrible the system is and how poorly designed the law was,” he added. “The administration isn’t living up to its promises, and they must be held accountable.”

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is scheduled to examine the Obamacare rollout failures on Thursday. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has refused to testify before the panel.

Reuters reports that an unnamed administration official said Saturday that nearly half a million people have applied for health insurance under Obamacare. Official numbers are expected to be released in November.

Via: Daily Caller

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Better off on public assistance

JuneLittleLady

Posted 42 mins ago

DH is a student on the GI Bill. I work part time in the evenings to avoid paying for childcare and take care of our 4 month old the rest of the time. Health insurance costs just about everything I make so I looked into state healthcare and learned that our family would be financially better off if I quit my job. Between health care and food stamps, we'd have more coming in than my job provides, but with my job we are $200 a month away from qualifying. I'm working because we need the income even though I hate leaving my baby. Is it crazy to quit my job? This might be more of a moral question than a financial question.

mayor_of_crazytown

Posted 38 mins ago

I'm not touching the morality/ethical part of this.

However, if your job qualifies you for the earned income credit, you might find that your tax refund is significant with you working part time.

And if you weren't working and have no earned income, then you might not get that credit.

Does anyone know how the GI bill is treated for tax purposes and the EIC?   I really don't know if it's treated like earned income or if it's treated more like a scholarship.

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j -- with 4 tweens and a new little one due Feb 2014

Concerned about Family Finances?  Join the conversation.

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Sarah_bara84

Posted 35 mins ago

This should be interesting.

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~Sarah

Jesus Loving, CDing, Non-vaxing, semi crunchy Momma of 3- and on the road to being debt free!

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JuneLittleLady

Posted 35 mins ago

I'd like to know as well, but am guessing it is not treated as earned income just like the housing allowance for military members is not.

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igottawanna!

Posted 28 mins ago

GI bill is not taxable and not reportable except for purposes of claiming education related credits.

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DS 06/20/2010

DD 03/05/2012

( o ) ( o ) and counting

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mmmwpch

Posted 26 mins ago

I used part GI bill part tuition assistance in 2012. The college will give out a 1099 for taxes and I actually got quite a bit back. I think if I recall right it was treated more like a scholarship than income.

When I hit my 10 yr mark with the military and got that raise it put me over the limit for WIC by about $60. I no longer qualified. I was not about to dump my career just for $200 a month in milk, eggs, cheese, bread, peanut butter, juice and cereal. We used more of the milk than anything else but I just tightened up in other areas and I've done ok without it.

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Our angel Cameron watches over us. Mikey 9/4/08 and sister Maylani Christine joined us on 8/22/11

Mikey's Blog http://autismmommy08.wordpress.com/

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Via: Baby Sitter Community

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White House deems health exchange glitches ‘unacceptable,’ GOP calls Obamacare DOA

President Obama will speak Monday to acknowledge a new potential political disaster — the glitch-laden federal health care exchanges.

Administration officials have no time to waste as they race to find a prescription to heal the sickly exchanges while Republicans, battered by the government shutdown debacle, quickly gear up to tout troubles with the Obamacare rollout.

“The President will directly address the technical problems with HealthCare.gov — troubles that he and his team find unacceptable,” a White House official said.

The remarks are part of an administration push to inject a new urgency into efforts to fix the site, which made its debut on Oct. 1 — the day the government was shut down as the Republicans sought to defund the 2010 law.

The Health and Human Services Department, which oversees HealthCare.gov, announced over the weekend that it has hired experts from the private sector and other federal agencies to rewrite flawed computer code that has hampered the site and left most users unable to sign up for health insurance plans available under Obamacare.

With the new steps, the administration appeared to have decided to own up to the technical woes that it had initially downplayed.

RELATED: GOP LEADERS SAY NO MORE SHUTDOWNS, CRUZ SAYS 'NO' TO THEM

“There’s no one more frustrated than the President at the difficulty in the website,” Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

In New York, one of only 16 states that has its own exchange, not one person had succeeded in using the site to enroll in a plan as of Friday.

Donna Frescatore, director of the New York State of Health marketplace, said Friday that 134,000 people had registered and shopped on the state’s online health care site since its Oct. 1 launch, and thousands signed up to enroll in a plan.

Via: NYDN

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Obamacare: Woman Falls Ill at Health Care Event

A woman behind President Obama fell ill at today's Obamacare event at the White House:

She looked like she was about to faint, as President Obama turned around in the middle of his remarks and told her to go take a seat. She left the back podium, and Obama joked, "This happens when I talk too long. You'll be okay. Why don't you go sit down? Come on. Good catch."

Via: Weekly Standard

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Thousands Of Consumers Get Insurance Cancellation Notices Due To Health Law Changes

Health plans are sending hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters to people who buy their own coverage, frustrating some consumers who want to keep what they have and forcing others to buy more costly policies.

The main reason insurers offer is that the policies fall short of what the Affordable Care Act requires starting Jan. 1. Most are ending policies sold after the law passed in March 2010.  At least a few are cancelling plans sold to people with pre-existing medical conditions.

By all accounts, the new policies will offer consumers better coverage, in some cases, for comparable cost -- especially after the inclusion of federal subsidies for those who qualify. The law requires policies sold in the individual market to cover 10 “essential” benefits, such as prescription drugs, mental health treatment and maternity care. In addition, insurers cannot reject people with medical problems or charge them higher prices. The policies must also cap consumers’ annual expenses at levels lower than many plans sold before the new rules.

But the 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. 

“I don’t feel like I need to change, but I have to,” said Jeff Learned, a television editor in Los Angeles, who must find a new plan for his teenage daughter, who has a health condition that has required multiple surgeries.

An estimated 14 million people purchase their own coverage because they don’t get it through their jobs. Calls to insurers in several states showed that many have sent notices.

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.

Via: Kaiser Health News

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HealthCare.Gov Needs Five Million Code Lines Rewritten

Obamacare’s online exchanges have been riddled with problems since they came online three weeks ago, and those issues may continue for at least the next few weeks. Contractors said fixing the problems by the November 1 deadline set by the administration would be “unrealistic,” according to the New York Times.

From the sluggish websites to garbled enrollment information, the flaws require the extensive rewriting of code: “One specialist said that as many as five million lines of software code may need to be rewritten before the Web site runs properly,” theTimes reports — that’s out of a total of approximately 500 million lines of code, according to another expert. 

Others experts warned that some of the website’s problems are yet to come. One technical specialist involved in the repair effort said, “The account creation and registration problems are masking the problems that will happen later.” 

Via: NRO

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