Heeeeeeere's Obamacare!

[Virus]

Can't help laughing my ass off when I see the thread title with the thumbs-up next to it. Solid gold award winner.

 

[Robrob]

No it's not. Your blog link is nothing but an argument to incredulity, not an actual refutation of the dollar amount (unless your point is that the dollar amount is closer to $500 million than $400 million which seems to be splitting hairs) The NYTimes pegs the total cost at more than $400 million, and cites the largest single contract for the Obamacare website at $94 million.

I understand the incredulity. It's hard to believe that this amount of money could be waste on something like this. Unfortunately, it's true.

Word to the wise, you should probably do more research about that claim. Realize that many of the outrageously inflated claims are lumping in contracts for other governmental work, not just limited to the ACA website.

 

[Biscuit]

The site doesn't work for conservatives.

I am about as liberal as they come. My iPhone is in a Obama phone case because I donated to the campaign and they sent it to me. It doesn't work for me.

 

[Unabogie]

Can't help laughing my ass off when I see the thread title with the thumbs-up next to it. Solid gold award winner.

The GOP really blew it. Again, they wasted time yelling at park rangers when they could have been grandstanding about healthcare.gov. All they have now are complaints about the website, but the website will be working fine soon enough. Meanwhile, millions of people are signing up for insurance they couldn't get before the ACA was instituted. In fact, here in Oregon, we've already cut the rolls of the uninsured by 10% in just two weeks.

http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2013/10/oregon_has_cut_tally_of_those.html

Though Oregon's health insurance exchange is not yet up and running, the number of uninsured is already dropping thanks to new fast-track enrollment for the Oregon Health Plan.

The low-income, Medicaid-funded program has already signed up 56,000 new people, cutting the state's number of uninsured by 10 percent, according to Oregon Health Authority officials.

Best of luck convincing these people to vote for repeal.

 

[Newtons Bit]

Word to the wise, you should probably do more research about that claim. Realize that many of the outrageously inflated claims are lumping in contracts for other governmental work, not just limited to the ACA website.

Your links state that CGI's bill ballooned to $292 million and not $94 million as the NYTimes states. Bear in mind, CGI is not the only firm working on Obamacare.

 

[DGM]

Your links state that CGI's bill ballooned to $292 million and not $94 million as the NYTimes states. Bear in mind, CGI is not the only firm working on Obamacare.

But they're working for the good guys so it's OK. We can just raise the dept ceiling to pay for it.

 

[fdbrian]

my insurance went from $1,222 a month to $897 a month. the deductibles went up a bit. I can also get a plan that is $58 higher than what I pay now with a huge decrease in the deductibles I currently would have to pay and an increased prescription drug benefit. Thanks ACA, ESAD Ted Cruze.

 

[Newtons Bit]

my insurance went from $1,222 a month to $897 a month. the deductibles went up a bit. I can also get a plan that is $58 higher than what I pay now with a huge decrease in the deductibles I currently would have to pay and an increased prescription drug benefit. Thanks ACA, ESAD Ted Cruze.

Yikes! That's more than my mortgage.

 

[Unabogie]

Yikes! That's more than my mortgage.

Welcome to the world outside of cheap catastrophic care, and add in age, a family, and a condition or two. In other words, behold your future.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Call it an argument from incredulity, but I have trouble buying that the website component cost anywhere near that. There are, according to that article, 55 contractors involved in the project. Obviously that means there are lots more components to this that the front-end website that connects end users to the infrastructure behind it. So while the numbers may be accurate, they're wildly misleading since they don't relate to the creation of a website, but to a much broader and deeper task.

That said, it's hugely disappointing that they botched the website part, since that's the "public facing" piece that gets all the eyeballs, but if you expect the ACA to be around for years to come, as I do, then 4-6 weeks of website glitches at the start of a mainstay of public policy will be completely forgotten.

It's a shame the GOP shut down the government, since they gave away three weeks of grandstanding for nothing. Total "own goal".

Which cost the economy roughly $24 billion. Way to be "fiscally responsible", Republicans

 

[MattusMaximus]

President Obama takes Sen. McCain's advice:

... The answer, Sen. John McCain said on CNN Sunday, is to “send Air Force One out to Silicon Valley, load it up with some smart people, bring them back to Washington, and fix this problem.”

Apparently, that’s sort of what the administration has in mind.

In a blog post Sunday, the Department of Health and Human Services said this:

“Our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the team and help improve HealthCare.gov.

“We’re also putting in place tools and processes to aggressively monitor and identify parts of HealthCare.gov where individuals are encountering errors or having difficulty using the site, so we can prioritize and fix them.

“We are also defining new test processes to prevent new issues from cropping up as we improve the overall service and deploying fixes to the site during off-peak hours on a regular basis.”

I fully expect this to get worked out. Hell, if we can send humans to the moon, we can fix this; we're only three weeks in, and it's just a matter of time.

That said, I also fully expect that Kathleen Sebelius will be asked to "retire" sometime in the spring.

 

[Unabogie]

President Obama takes Sen. McCain's advice:



I fully expect this to get worked out. Hell, if we can send humans to the moon, we can fix this; we're only three weeks in, and it's just a matter of time.

That said, I also fully expect that Kathleen Sebelius will be asked to "retire" sometime in the spring.

That's awesome. Not that they'd ask, but I'd gladly volunteer dev time to such a cause. Of course, no one has called me among the "best and brightest" of code monkeys.

 

[Newtons Bit]

Welcome to the world outside of cheap catastrophic care, and add in age, a family, and a condition or two. In other words, behold your future.

My current plan is not catastrophic. How many times do I have to say that.

Secondly, I'm one of the many people on this forum that are in favor of a British style National Health System. I'd like for this country to get actual affordable health care, not the "Affordable Care Act", which is anything but.

 

[thaiboxerken]

My current plan is not catastrophic. How many times do I have to say that.

Secondly, I'm one of the many people on this forum that are in favor of a British style National Health System. I'd like for this country to get actual affordable health care, not the "Affordable Care Act", which is anything but.

I don't believe you. 60 dollars a month is very low.

 

[Newtons Bit]

I don't believe you. 60 dollars a month is very low.

Just because I have a good deal prior to Obamacare doesn't mean I'm lying.

 

[Unabogie]

My current plan is not catastrophic. How many times do I have to say that.

Secondly, I'm one of the many people on this forum that are in favor of a British style National Health System. I'd like for this country to get actual affordable health care, not the "Affordable Care Act", which is anything but.

I don't believe you. 60 dollars a month is very low.

Just because I have a good deal prior to Obamacare doesn't mean I'm lying.

I think you're just mistaken. Your overall coverage is sparse or else you would not be paying such a low premium. It's just math.

That said, I was referring to the fact that as you get older, your health care is going to rise by a lot when you add in age, a family, and a condition or two. There are ZERO 50 year olds with 60 buck a month coverage.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Just because I have a good deal prior to Obamacare doesn't mean I'm lying.

Perhaps. Can you help us verify your claims?

 

[Puppycow]

Shockingly, it turns out you posted an internet myth.

Here's what your link says:

Three hundred ninety-four million dollars is an absurd expense by itself. The problem is that it is likely a lowball estimate. The Digital Trends article cites a Center for Medicare Services budget request $1 billion in 2013, ostensibly "needed to support operational infrastructure and to prepare for open enrollment in the Federally-facilitated Exchanges prior to FY 2014."

The $1 billion figure though probably includes costs that are not for development of the website itself. Here's what Wikipedia says:

The technical problems were heavily criticised, and Republican representatives sent President Obama a list of questions, demanding explanations for what went wrong. Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs described the technical problems as "excruciatingly embarrassing", and said that some people should be fired.[4] Scott Amey of the Project on Government Oversight pointed to the development cost ceiling being raised from $93.7 million to $292 million, and asked "Where was the contract oversight?"[4]

The Obama administration repeatedly modified regulations and policies until Summer 2013, meaning contractors had to deal with changing requirements. However, changing requirements are by no means unusual in a large, expensive custom software project; they are a well-known factor in historical project failures, and methodologies such as agile software development have been developed to cope with them. Unfortunately, regulations pertaining to large government contracts in many countries, including the United States, are not a good match for agile software development.[3]

I'm reminded of another thread about a botched computer system for the NHS in the UK.

When I was briefly involved, the project timescales were impossible which means that literally thousands of bodies were being thrown at the project with no chance of success (IIRC it was something like a delivery in March when the business requirements weren't signed off until January). This cycle will have repeated several times.

The suppliers will also have fulfilled their contractual obligations but money will have been wasted in the meantime. Putting it in garden terms, they will have been asked to deliver a shed, while they're building the shed they will have been asked to change the requirements all the time so they keep having to take it apart and put it back together again, then they will have been asked to build a greenhouse and finally a workshop. If a workshop had been specified and built from the start it would have been far cheaper but they've als0 built all the other stuff as well

In the UK case, total costs were over 10 billion pounds, and in the end, the system didn't even work.

Hundreds of millions of dollars for development of a website may seem like a lot, but unless you have experience in the industry, and projects of this nature, you may not understand how complicated it can actually be.

 

[Kopji]

Just for reference, that's very generous coverage that your employer is providing. As a guesstimate, it would fall somewhere between a Gold and a Platinum level plan if you were buying individual insurance through the exchange. For comparison purposes, you could probably look at a Gold level plan in your area to get an idea of what the cost would be if you were purchasing directly.

I'm trying to stay off the .gov site right now although my curiosity is killing me.

Our enterprise is privately insured, which just means we negotiate a block package with an insurance company and offer it to employees. The problem presented by the ACA is that no matter what they do, we like stability in costs. Our package costs are going to be kept in line, even though all the employees that used to 'opt out' now need to be covered. (The prediction is that for about three years things are a little uncertain.) So to bring everyone into the insurance fold, for some employees the costs go up and for some the costs go down. We expect revisions as the effects of the law become more clear. So far though, the logic and basic fairness of what is happening is not hard to figure out.

One statement Obama made that is simply mistaken, is that everyone will be able to keep their current insurance if they want to. If nothing else, some people's policies are being cancelled because they are not as good as the new policies being offered. In our case, the company is reorganizing our private insurance so that all employees can now be covered where before they were able to opt out if they wanted. It may very well be that in the future there will be broader choices, but for now they are trying to adjust to what is most fair.

 

[Kopji]

Obamacare is good for jobs.

Lucrative jobs at lobbying firms for the people who drafted it.

I think a law that forbid someone from making a profit off of what they did when in government would be interesting for both parties.

Nobody would run for office.