Will Obamacare get its act together in time?

[Captain ******* Kirk]

In short, the administration passed a law with an unrealistically aggressive implementation schedule. And because of the way it passed it, it had no way to finesse that deadline. The exchanges had to go live on Tuesday no matter how badly they were working -- heck, even if they weren’t working at all and no one had ever managed to successfully complete a test run. Because the alternative was asking Republicans for a delay … and having them enthusiastically agree to put the law off for a minimum of a year, and preferably longer.

Then the administration made things worse by waiting -- waiting to hand out the contracts and waiting to see if it could pick up a few extra states to run their own exchanges. Yes, there was a lot of uncertainty around the Supreme Court case and the midterm elections. And even if you are proceeding with all due speed, writing rules for implementation takes time. But even with those caveats, the administration clearly took a very tight schedule and made things even worse.

So no, this is not a good project undone by Republican “sabotage,” as I saw suggested on Twitter this morning. It’s a potentially good IT project undone by system design and deadlines chosen for political reasons, rather than feasibility. What we’ve been through in the last week, I’d argue, is the inevitable result.

Republicans Didn't Sabotage Health Exchanges, Obama Did

[Captain ******* Kirk]

“I really don’t like the Republican tactics, but at least now I can understand why they are so pissed about this.”

If you had to crystallize the Democratic Party’s greatest fear into a single sentence, it would be the one above. This was the sentiment expressed by Cindy Vinson, a 60-year-old retired teacher and San Jose, California resident, who learned last week that she will be responsible for $1,800 more in annual costs for an individual health care policy following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

“I was laughing at [House Speaker John] Boehner – until the mail came today,” Tom Waschura, a 52-year-old Portola Valley resident and partisan Democrat who discovered his family of four will now be responsible for $10,000 more in insurance costs.

The public will be hard pressed to find a Republican inside the Beltway who believes shutting down the government was a great idea. The polls conducted prior to and immediately following the shutdown show that the public was opposed to using this extraordinary tactic to defund the ACA.

But in the wake of last week’s “excruciatingly frustrating” Obamacare roll-out, to quote Democratic California Rep.Adam Schiff, the shutdown appears like less of a flailing overreaction to the ACA and more like a noble last stand.

Is Obamacare’s Messy Roll-Out Redeeming the GOP’s Shutdown?

[Dinner]

Citation needed. You're not the most truthful source of information. So I'll need a little more than your word.

Covered California is the website they're going to, ****.

http://blogs.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/10/01/covered-california-day-one-huge-traffic-obamacare/

You just can't stop yourself from lying, can you?

[Dinner]

Covered California Day One: Huge Traffic

The ceremonial switch was thrown Tuesday morning around 8 a.m., and Covered California was open for business. By 3 p.m., officials reported the Covered California website had received 5 million hits, averaging 5,000 per minute, and call center wait times were 20-30 minutes. Roughly 17,000 people called in to Covered California service centers by 3 p.m.*
Covered California is the state’s new health insurance marketplace, established as part of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.
Call centers in California — and nationwide — have been jammed.
Lines weren’t just long on the phone either. There was a sign-up event at Merritt College in Oakland Tuesday afternoon for community college students. KQED writer Ryder Diaz reported long wait times; students were having to leave and go to class.
While today has been a very busy day, people do still have time to enroll. For insurance that will take effect Jan. 1, Californians need to enroll by Dec. 15.
At a press event Tuesday morning, Covered California executive director Peter Lee struck an almost-euphoric note.
“This is the day where millions of people’s dreams are going to come true,” Lee said. “This is a day when a hundred years of efforts by Republicans going back to Teddy Roosevelt, to Democrats like Teddy Kennedy, have been working to change America to make health care a right, not a privilege.”
Going forward, in California, rates may only be set according to three factors: your age, where you live and number of people in your family. No longer can your health status be taken into account or can you be turned down for health insurance because of a preexisting condition.
KQED’s Mina Kim spoke with Lisa Aliferis about Covered California’s big day.

Not everyone is affected
If you currently have job-based insurance or if you’re on Medicare or Medi-Cal, nothing about your situation is going to change. But if you’re buying your own insurance, Covered California is a new marketplace for you. It’s estimated that half the people in California buying insurance right now will be eligible for subsidies, and many of the uninsured will be eligible for subsidies as well.

Covered California needs a mix of people
It’s really important that Covered California has a mix of people entering its marketplace. Not just the sick people who have been denied insurance, but also healthy people, because the company needs to spread the risk around. If Covered California gets only sick people, then a year from now, insurance premiums could go up.
Covered California is reaching out to young, healthy people, and the more people that enroll, the bigger the pool, the more likely it is that Californians have reasonable premiums going forward.
And if you’re thinking, “Well, this doesn’t really matter to me,” you have to take a step back and think: If you lost your job-based insurance, and found yourself on the individual marketplace, you would want insurance premiums that you can afford.
Covered California officials told me they would release some early enrollment numbers next week. As soon as we have the numbers, we’ll share them.

[Related: Obamacare Explained -- A Guide for Californians]

Sign up deadline comes later this year
There’s a finite enrollment period. It started Tuesday and runs through March 31 — to sign up for insurance that will be in effect through 2014. If you want health insurance on Jan. 1, you need to sign up by Dec. 15. After that, you must sign up by the 15^th of the month and insurance will take effect the first of the following month, until March 31, when the door closes on the open-enrollment period.
In a press release early Tuesday evening, Covered California said it would take down the enrollment section of its website at 9 p.m. Tuesday until “early Wednesday. This will help optimize performance” for people logging on in the future, the release said.
*Correction: Earlier, KQED reported that Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said Covered California’s website received 10,000 hits a second. Later, Covered California reported the site at the peak received 16,000 page views per minute.

http://blogs.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/10/01/covered-california-day-one-huge-traffic-obamacare/

[Captain ******* Kirk]

Thank you for that useful press release, Oerdin. You're really lifting the intellectual level of this thread.

[Dinner]

It's a news story from a highly creditable source, dullard. Or are you going to claim NPR/California Public Radio isn't a creditable source? Just kill yourself if you do.

[Captain ******* Kirk]

1. The word you're looking for is "credible".

2. That piece reference both a press event and a press release as the source of its information.

[DinoDoc]

http://blogs.kqed.org/stateofhealth/...fic-obamacare/

You just can't stop yourself from lying, can you?

You truly can't stop lying, can you?

California exchange overstated its Web traffic for Obamacare launch

[Sava]

DD, how many times are you going to link that?

For a state like California, even 500,000 unique hits in a short amount of time is a lot of traffic.

Oh no! An internal communication error caused them to misquote the figure. THANKS OBAMA

You've become a meme.

[Captain ******* Kirk]

Where is your Daily Show review? I really was looking forward to it.

[Sava]

Yeah. I don't know what you were talking about before. What was your original complaint about it?

Nevermind. You are probably trolling. God help you if you actually believe the things you say.

[DinoDoc]

DD, how many times are you going to link that?

When its relevant to Oerdin lying.

[Sava]

When its relevant to Oerdin lying.

It's not a lie if he believes it.

[Sava]

My farts smell like rotten eggs.

[DinoDoc]

It's not a lie if he believes it.

If he's just stupid then you should thank me for trying to bring him out of the mire of his own ignorance.