If it can operate.
- Obstruction One: millions of people are losing their health insurance (and those that aren’t are getting massive premium hikes). Up to almost 11 million will,according to NBC; 2 million already have, according to CBS (CNN can’t bear to give hard numbers, and instead settled on general pronouncements of doom). As has been discussed on numerous sites, this is a personal problem-shading-to-disaster for a measurable percentage of the population of the United States; it’s also an indication that the President flat-out lied when he said that ifyou like your plan, you can keep it. The White House is… not doing anything about that, apparently. Unless you count unleashing Valerie Jarrett upon the world.
- Obstruction Two: almost half of the previously-uninsured don’t… know enough about the danged law. I and Jim Geraghty are just as shocked as you are, but apparently this is a thing: “Even though the health insurance exchanges opened about a month ago and hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent promoting them, almost half (47 percent) of uninsured Americans still do not know where they can get information on how the Affordable Care Act will affect them…” The White House is supposedly doing something about that. Supposedly.
Quick note about these two points: taken together, they indicate that there’s a huge pool of people who are now vulnerable to next year’s individual mandate. So, time to access the website…
- Obstruction Three: the websites don’t work. The federal exchange is a hot mess, and the state exchanges only look good in comparison. Neither half of the exchanges network is particularly prepared to handle a rush of tens of millions of people, which is the major reason why the White House bought itself six more weeks of time by fully extending open enrollment to March 31st, 2014. This, of course, won’t help the people who will be without coverage starting January 1st, 2014 (see Obstruction One) – but one step at a time, hey? Presumably, the entire focus of the White House is now engaged in fixing this problem, and to be fair: it’s the prerequisite for fixing the other ones.
…but the problem is that, once the site is fixed, the administration’s real problems start. Because while various Lefty pundits may be content to argue about how many angels can dance on the premium of a new Obamacare policy the populace is going to focus on Hey, my healthcare costs doubled and my deductible is godawful, instead.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Three interlocking gears
They all need to be fixed to work. [Link]
3 comments:
More and more negative press surfaces every day. This, to me, is the biggest indicator that what some of us knew to be true (or should have known) is no longer deniable. Even the mainstream press/media has to acknowledge what an utter fiasco this supposed improvement in health care is turning out to be. "News" being what it is, the media is now focusing on anecdotal disastrous consequences, and that's what we're hearing. If they'd paid more attention a year ago to the potential consequences, we wouldn't have this mess to begin with. Say what you will about Bill and Hillary. At least they knew when they were licked. They're a lot smarter and more savvy than O, and they weren't able to come up with a workable plan. I wonder how many of the 14 million who will lose their coverage voted for Obama.
It's only going to get worse when the delay for employer health insurance ends next year and we get to go over this all over again - except with way more people having their insurance cancelled.
On today's Fox News they announced figures for day one of Obamacare, but only after the figures had to be subpoenaed. Turns out a total of six people enrolled. Six. It'd be funny if it weren't so tragic.
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