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Heeeeeeere's Obamacare!

balrog666 said:
I guess you have to keep telling that lie since you have no facts at hand. It's kinda sad really ...
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It is hardly a lie, it's more of a fact than an opinion. One only needs to look at current events and the history of GOP actions since Obama took office.

What's sad is that you don't let reality alter your perceptions.
 
Here's an update from NPR about the enrollment numbers so far. As expected, with the federal website so glitchy in the first month, they are a bit disappointing:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/201...umbers-are-out-and-theyre-worse-than-expected

However, there is some very interesting analysis within the piece. Specifically, we should take care to note that the 106,000 people enrolled are those who are purchasing private insurance on the exchanges (both state and federal). No doubt this number will increase (at an increasing rate) as the federal website issues are fixed and deadlines begin to approach. In addition, the enrollment in Medicaid is quite high:

... We now know that a lot of people are qualifying for Medicaid coverage or the Children's Health Insurance Program; 396,261 people have been deemed eligible for these programs so far. About 213,000 have enrolled through the state exchanges, and 183,000 on the federal exchange. ...
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Last, but not least, is a word of caution from health care analysts about reading too much into these initial low numbers on the private exchanges:

... Just about every health care analyst points out that you shouldn't expect a lot of people to sign up during the first month of a six-month sign-up period. So the numbers probably would have been pretty small even if everything had been working just fine. ...
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Another story I saw on NPR today talks about how a lot (roughly 1/3) of young people can get health insurance for $50/month or less through the ACA.

... And at least some people have been able to get on the Obamacare websites and shop around like the administration wants them to. Brighid Greene, a 24-year-old dancer who lives in the New York City borough of Queens, is one.

"I'm excited that it worked," she says. "I think that's huge that I was able to go on and, like, figure it out and make sense of it."

Greene makes $27,000 a year. She went online to find out what kind of coverage she could get, and from the best she could figure, with the tax credits she'd qualify for, it would be $159 a month.

Greene says that's less than half of what she can get without Obamacare for a similar plan. So she's going to sign up. ...
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Obviously, she's getting screwed by Obamacare ;)
 
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bonzombiekitty said:
It would be roughly 50% if all the states accepted the medicare extension. IIRC, they also said roughly 90% of young people can get insurance for about $100 or less.
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Even without subsidies, the cost of a Silver plan for a single person under 30 will be around $250 a month or less.

The people that can fall into a gap are at the other end of the age spectrum. Insurance costs could be a real burden for a single person or a couple that are over 60 and have an income just a bit higher than the 400% subsidy limit.
 
The title of this thread reminds me of The Shining. Replace Jack with O.
 
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Incidentally, I ran into this article from Northwestern University about one possible reason why not many people have signed up for the ACA so far is not so much because the website didn't work well, which I admit it didn't for the first month (though it is much improved now), but because most people just aren't that web savvy.

I'm particularly interested in getting feedback from professional web monkeys on this issue. What do you think?
 
MattusMaximus said:
And what would you put in its place? Nothing? Go back to the way it was before, when sick people could have their insurance dropped?
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But at least they could have cheap plans (as long as they didn't expect them to actually provide care).
 
MattusMaximus said:
Incidentally, I ran into this article from Northwestern University about one possible reason why not many people have signed up for the ACA so far is not so much because the website didn't work well, which I admit it didn't for the first month (though it is much improved now), but because most people just aren't that web savvy.

I'm particularly interested in getting feedback from professional web monkeys on this issue. What do you think?
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Yes and no. Sure, users are universally dumb, every programmer knows that. But a site such as this must be designed in a way to be as foolproof as possible. Yes, the universe will invent a bigger fool, and at this point you can't help them anymore, but the nature of the site demands the very best in terms of ergonomy and usability. Based on the initial reports by Dessi and company, and how apparently it was plagued by problems, I can see that the design is, or was, very flawed.

That said the whole thing got me curious. So I signed up with a fake account :newlol just to play with the system. It's far from perfect and could be designed better, but it's really not that bad. I wonder why so many people are struggling to even sign up? I created an account in Florida just fine. Got my email notification, activated it, logged in.

I then tried with Illinois, since WildCat had so many problems. Using Chrome. Created an account using a temporary trash email, successfully logged in. So... what's the problem?

A few usability flaws that really have no place being there, though, that I saw:

- You choose a username and email address on step 1. Then your password on step 2. If your username or email is invalid (already used, for instance), the system waits until after you already filled your security questions on step 3 before taking you back to step 1 and telling you they're invalid, which is really bad. Worse, you have to re-enter all the fields all over again. Terrible. It's trivially easy to make all the validation on the same "step" page (and remember all the fields), any amateur could do it. CGI or whoever designed this has no excuse.
- Password issues which Dessi already explained. There is no reason whatsoever to force a restricted password format on users. Forcing them to have a lowercase + uppercase + number is bad enough, but I could get that most users are not good at choosing passwords and try to force them to be pickier. But why block "special characters"? There is NO REASON to do this unless your tech behind is really, really bad. There's been a thread about this recently that talks about this: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=268343

I didn't go further than activating the account and logging in, since I'm not a US citizen anyway so it'd be pointless (I'm already messing up their registration stats I'm sure XD) but these problems are just for the registration, so maybe there are other application design flaws later on. Or maybe not, I'm just speculating.

But yeah, to summarize: the site needs to be dumbed down, due to its nature. Luckily it seems very straightforward for the most part, but the error handling is mediocre and the password policy is garbage. :)
 
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The New York site uses the same id as any New York online service such as unemployment. The only trouble I had activating my account was the choosing security questions, after which it would error out. I waited two days and then it worked. This isn't worse than I've had with Apple or Google accounts of which I've made countless for people buying smartphones for the first time.
 
Morrigan said:
I didn't go further than activating the account and logging in, since I'm not a US citizen anyway so it'd be pointless (I'm already messing up their registration stats I'm sure XD) but these problems are just for the registration, so maybe there are other application design flaws later on. Or maybe not, I'm just speculating.
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There have been problems with the system that are invisible to the users, but which are absolutely critical.
 
Question for those earlier in the thread (i.e., WildCat, etc) who were having trouble accessing the federal website: Is it any easier to do so now?

I ask because I haven't seen any complaints about it for awhile now.
 
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