Forget the Obamacare website, the real crisis is with the insurers

Presumably, the healthcare.gov website will be more or less operational after a few months. But that's not even the biggest problem with the program.

Insurers are getting bad information from the enrollments. The federal data hub that is supposed to tell consumers how much of a subsidy they will get is so dysfunctional that insurers have no confidence in the data. And come January 1, insurers believe there will be lots of outraged consumers who were misquoted on coverage and cost.

Washington Examiner:

Affirming what health industry consultant Bob Laszewski has written, my source said that insurers have received a relatively small trickle of enrollments through the federal website, but they are seeing problems.

Duplicate enrollments are a recurring issue. This means that the insurer is notified that somebody has enrolled in an insurance policy through the government exchange, but then receives another notice that the same person has un-enrolled, followed still later by another one that they re-enrolled, and so on.

As of now, it's unclear whether this duplication problem is triggered by a failure in the way Healthcare.gov interacts with the systems of insurers, or if shoppers on the federal exchange are enrolling and un-enrolling themselves as they go through the selection process. Insurers can't ascertain the ultimate choice of the shopper because there are no time stamps attached to transactions on the site.

Other potential challenges involve whether the website will be able to properly communicate with a massive federal data hub to verify applicants' income accurately, calculate subsidies they may be entitled to under the law, and display the correct plan price.

There's also a question of whether the federal website is properly displaying information about plan deductibles, co-payments, and benefits.

Via American Thinker
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TROUBLED CITIES MUST RECKON WITH STOCKTON’S DEAL

SACRAMENTO — The most optimistic pension reformers had hoped that the decrepit city of Stockton’s 2012 bankruptcy would be a “day of reckoning” — a point where the city’s leaders would pare back overly generous retirement benefits and embark on a road to fiscal responsibility.

They saw hope for hard-pressed cities everywhere, as Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein set up a possible showdown over pension payments when he rejected efforts by bond insurers to stop the bankruptcy motion. Klein said he was leaving everything on the table, meaning that city employees might eventually join the bond guys in taking a haircut.

But as often happens with government-reform efforts, the pessimists turned out to be right. Earlier this month, the Stockton City Council approved a plan that restructures debt and fully funds the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, thus leaving pension benefits for city employees unscathed.

If there’s any doubt who won out, one need only read the CalPERS statement: “By continuing to fully fund its pension obligations, Stockton … acknowledged the importance of a secure retirement to its current employees and retirees, and the positive impact that pensions have on recruitment and retention of quality public servants.”

It’s hard to believe that such lush pensions are needed to lure “quality public servants.” But whatever the case, when cities run out of money everyone should share the pain. Instead, the key “stakeholders” — city employees, union leaders, Wall Street creditors — declared a “win-win,” but the deal is not without its losers: taxpayers.

Via: Human Events

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[VIDEO] Cruz: I didn’t come to the Senate to get 99 new friends

An old adage (misattributed to Harry Truman by Maureen Dowd) advises newcomers to Washington that if they want to make a friend, they should buy a dog.  Ted Cruz echoes that advice in a new interview with ABC News, in which he says that his ambitions in Washington didn’t involve becoming a beloved member of the clubbiest club in the world:

Breaking News

“There’s an old saying that, ‘Politics, it ain’t beanbag.’ And, you know, I’m not serving in office because I desperately needed 99 new friends in the U.S. Senate,” Cruz told ABC News’ Jon Karl in his first on-camera interview after the shutdown came to an end Wednesday night. …

And he made it clear that he thinks his Republican colleagues in the Senate are responsible for sabotaging his effort to tie funding for the government to an effort to defund or delay the health care law.

“I will say that the reason this deal, the lousy deal was reached last night, is because, unfortunately, Senate Republicans made the choice not to support House Republicans,” Cruz told ABC News. “I wish Senate Republicans had united, I tried to do everything I could to urge Senate Republicans to come together and stand with House Republicans.”

Cruz laid the blame on Senate Republicans attacking House Republicans during the shutdown:

“I think it was unfortunate that you saw multiple members of the Senate Republicans going on television attacking House conservatives, attacking the effort to defund Obamacare, saying, ‘It cannot win, It’s a fools error and we will lose, this must fail,’” Cruz said.

“That is a recipe for losing the fight, and it’s a shame.”

Via: Hot Air
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EBT America

Walmart’s food-stamp shoppers and Washington’s big spenders have so much in common.

“Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher,” Justice Louis Brandeis famously pointed out in his Olmstead dissent. “For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.”

When the government acts like a banana republic, the people will behave as though they live in one. Juxtaposing the chaotic footage of EBT cardholders conducting a legal looting at a Louisiana Walmart this past weekend with the constant cable-news loop of lawmakers conducting a legal looting of future generations affirms this. Both demonstrate the perils of letting one set of people spend another set of people’s money. 

“I saw people drag out eight to ten grocery carts,” Springhill police chief Will Lynd told ABC News. “It was definitely worse than Black Friday. It was worse than anything we had ever seen in this town.” The catalyst for the food riot was an EBT computer shutdown in 17 states. Rather than shut off EBT purchases, the Walmart allowed EBT purchases without reference to account limits. The store, rather than the government or the EBT cardholders, will now make up the difference between the amounts on the cards and the amounts at the cash register.

The police chief observed one customer leave with $700 in groceries and most others simply abandon overflowing carts once informed that the government’s computer system had come back online. The devastation left in the food frenzy’s wake evoked the visual of Mad Max set in a Stop & Shop. “There was no food left on any of the shelves, and no more meat,” Chief Lynd explained. “The grocery part of Walmart was totally decimated.”

USA Today Reporter: Healthcare.gov May Need to Be Completely Overhauled

The Morning Joe panel interviewed USA Today reporter Kelly Kennedy about her damning article on the healthcare.gov Monday morning.

Kennedy said experts contend the glitches are the result of the Obamacare website being built on 10 year-old technology that may need to be completely overhauled.

Host Joe Scarborough ribbed his liberal co-host Mika Brzezinski, noting the irony that the firm hired by the U.S. to launch the Obamacare website was fired by the province of Ontario in Canada:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Wow, Mika. I mean, so what we’re talking here Mika — the Canadians fired a Canadian firm that the United States hired to run the biggest governmental launch in a generation. Huh.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: You know, it’s interesting –

KATY KAY: Speechless.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Everybody missed that. They were so busy — I don’t know. I guess they were looking somewhere else. I don’t know.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Yeah whatever.

Via: WFB

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Private Charities Stepped Up While Government Was Shut Down

Over the past two weeks, much media coverage has been devoted to the politicians in Washington, while far less time was spent discussing the ramifications the shutdown had on the lives of furloughed federal workers. The people who work for non-essential segments of the federal government are working to put food on the table and take care of their kids like any other individuals working in the private sector. So while it’s easy to chuckle and point out that life went mostly unchanged in the partial shutdown, there were people immediately affected by it.

In an ideal situation, there would be enough private sector jobs to absorb the number of people employed in the unnecessary parts of federal government. It’s tempting to look at an index of government positions and cross out all of the extraneous agencies and departments. However, while the economy isn’t all bad, it’s pretty plain that there are simply not enough available jobs for this to be feasible.

Furloughed federal workers will receive retroactive pay, but not until the government reopened of course. Until then, there was no paycheck coming in.

This had some Capitol Hill workers fretting over making various payments if the shutdown kept dragging on. It’s likely that many federal workers would have “[fou]nd themselves in a serious financial bind if they miss[ed] two paychecks.” There are those who had retroactive pay coming, but still could not afford to put food on the table, as they were already living paycheck to paycheck.

Via: Pocket Full of Liberty

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Media Shapes Views of Low-Information Voters

A funny television feature by Dan Joseph on MRCTV prompted me to question how public opinion could possibly be so distorted these days. In man-on-the-street interviews, the reporter asked numerous people whether President Obama or President Bush was responsible for the government shutdown. A hilarious succession of people solemnly declared that President Bush is the one responsible. While the interviews are laughable, the problem of "low-information voters" is not funny at all. A republic whose educational and cultural institutions produce voters that are ill informed cannot hope to arrive at good civic decisions.

Evidence that the public is not well-informed abounds. According to the Pew Research Center's biennial survey, television is still the public's top news source (69 percent) and the public still believes that journalists are the ones who make sense of issues and conflicts (54 percent) and that the press is a "watchdog" preventing political leaders from misleading the public (43 percent).

Yet, a fawning New York City reporter, WABC's Diana Williams, interviewed President Obama, asking him if he felt any responsibility for the government shutdown. Astoundingly, the president accepted absolutely no responsibility whatsoever, calling the standoff purely a result of the "bad strategy" of the GOP, aimed at "blindsiding" the Democrats and "extracting ransom." The obsequious reporter left unchallenged Obama's self-serving statements that painted him as "above the fray" and totally innocent of any involvement in the political crisis. Despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, the president claimed that he had a "track record of consistently seeking compromise," to the point that members of his party "were critical of him," but that he "always does what is best for the country." The reporter summed up the interview by calling him "calm, thoughtful and kind." Calm, perhaps. Kind? What planet has this reporter been living on for the last five years?

Via: American Thinker

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Plug-Ins Account For Less Than Half of 1% of Auto Sales This Year

(CNSNews.com) –  After the federal government spent billions of dollars on federal tax credits and subsidies to promote all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, they accounted for less than half of one percent of the 11.7 million light vehicles purchased in the U.S. during the last nine months.

In his 2011 “State of the Union” address, President Obama predicted that the U.S. would “become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” and backed up his prediction with $2.4 billion in federal grants to companies that produce lithium-ion batteries to power them.

But with 14 months to go, sales of the two top-selling plug-in cars are running far behind the president’s expectations. And despite receiving $99.8 million in stimulus funds, electric charging station manufacturer Ecotality filed for bankruptcy last month.

In April, the Congressional Research Service reported that “there is a gap between the Administration’s goal of having one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 and consumer demand for such vehicles.” (See CRS.pdf)

Auto sales figures during the first nine months of 2013 confirm CRS’ conclusion.

According to the Department of Energy’s (DOE) “February 2011 Status Report,” General Motors was supposed to produce and sell 120,000 Chevrolet Volts in 2013 to keep pace with the president’s goal.

Via: CNS News

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The Daily Caller investigates: What are the numbers on the hilariously sad failure of Obamacare?

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Obama not Nixon, Carter or Clinton but the president who hates the U.S.

Why do so many empty talking heads and journalists keep comparing Barack Hussein Obama to other presidents?

Journalists: Obama the Worst Since Nixon’ is the latest.

When it comes to presidencies, Obama is not the worst since Nixon, Carter, Clinton, et al, he’s the worst.

“The Obama administration’s hostility toward media and efforts to crack down on whistleblowers and leakers has created “a tremendous chilling effect” on substantive reporting, the Committee to Protect Journalists and veteran reporters said Thursday.” (The Washington Free Beacon, Oct. 18, 2013).

“The CPJ issued last week a scathing report, written by former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr, on the effects of the Obama administration’s efforts to control press coverage, burnish its image, and thwart unauthorized leaks.

“The Obama administration’s aggressive war on leaks, and its determined efforts to control information that the news media needs to hold the government accountable for its actions, are without equal since the Nixon administration and in direct conflict with President Obama’s often-stated goal of making his administration the most transparent in history,” Downie said.

‘The Committee to Protect Journalists and veteran reporters’?

How about ‘The Committee to Protect average Americans from ‘The Committee to Protect Journalists and veteran reporters’?

How about rather than media scribes racing to the protection of committees, and folding like so many cheap suits, they don’t let Obama get away with it by digging deeper in quest of finding the truth?

The growing trend to compare Barack Hussein Obama to other presidents is a trend that takes its source—from Barack Hussein Obama, who started it all back in 2006.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Obamacare Monster: Mounting Errors Paralyze Plans

The disastrous rollout of the Obamacare website has taken a new turn with errors turning up for the few who successfully managed to enroll through the glitch-filled site.

Executives at more than a dozen health plans have told The Wall Street Journal that errors include duplicate enrollments, spouses reported as children, missing data fields, and suspect eligibility determinations. 

In one case, a customer successfully signed up on Healthcare.gov for three plans at one company.

"The longer this takes to resolve… the harder it will be to get people to [come back and] sign up," Aetna Inc. Chief Executive Mark Bertolini told the Journal. "It's not off to a great start."

While insurers have indicated they have been able to solve the problems manually, there is concern it won't be possible as enrollment accelerates in the coming months, the Journal reports.

ObamaCare: You Can Win With The Facts 

"We know that people are enrolling in coverage and the system works. As individual problems are raised by insurers, we work aggressively to address them," HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters told the Journal.

From its launch on Oct. 1, the website has been immobilized by problems, including an inability to cope with high levels of traffic, which prevented people from accessing the site, as well as major software flaws.

Republicans have called for the head of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for failing to ensure the system would work. 

The administration initially blamed the issues on high demand, but has since admitted the site was fraught with serious flaws, though officials have withheld details.

Via: Newsmax

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[CARTOON] Kicking the Can

Via: California Political Review