Is Obamacare Dying a “Sickening” Death?

LOW ENROLLMENT, HIGHER PREMIUMS, EXPENSIVE GLITCHES…CAN IT SURVIVE?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Oct. 27, 2013) — Amid a troubled rollout of Obama’s Healthcare.gov website for enrollment of Americans into health-care plans in keeping with the Affordable Care Act, many have been unable to access, register, or choose a health plan.

On October 21, NPR reported that in order for Obamacare to survive, enrollment must increase over the next “few weeks.”  Potential customers must register before choosing a plan and seeing its cost.  The regime is estimating that the website can be repaired by the end of November.

While CNN reported that the website “buckled under the volume” of visitors on its first day, the reported number causing its shutdown on the first night was 2,000. Early testing had revealed that only a few hundred people using the site at the same time caused it to crash.  The enrollment goal for March 31, 2014 was set at 7,000,000, the number considered necessary to render the program “economically feasible.”

On October 2, The Huffington Post reported that the rollout was “taking baby steps toward becoming fully operational.”

The Obama regime has spent approximately $1 billion on costs associated with building the website which crashed after only 2,000 “hits” on its first day, and repairs now required to make it fully functioning are predicted to significantly increase the cost of the program as insurance companies have reportedly been assured of being paid any shortfalls between services provided and their actual costs.

For those without internet access or who have experienced “glitches” in using it, paper and phone applications are options.  However, Politico reports, “But the truth is those applications — on paper or by phone — have to get entered into the same lousy website that is causing the problems in the first place. And the people processing the paper and calls don’t have any cyber secret passage to duck around that. They too have to deal with all the frustrations of HealthCare.gov — full-time.”

In the opening days of enrollment, actual purchases of insurance were said to be in the “single digits,” and the Obama regime will not provide a total number of enrollees to date.

During testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, several executives of companies responsible for building the website said that the responsibility for making the decision to open the site on October 1 belonged to the Centers for Medicaid Services, which reports to the Department of Health and Human Services.  They reported that there was not enough time to fully test each component of the system which has resulted in duplicate and incomplete applications.

One experienced analyst in the health care field said before the launch:

The administration hasn’t managed expectations – it is [sic] has spun them…If only sick people show up, Obamacare is on a long walk off a short pier.

When people begin to see the prices they will pay and the benefits they get for those prices, many will become even more cynical (See: Benefit Shock).

If there are serious launch problems that goes to the heart of the administration’s credibility. After all, they have been telling us this would all work on time––albeit with a few “bumps.”

If people have lots of trouble and frustration trying to gain access to sites or call centers or provider lists, word will get around. If they are sick, people will run the gauntlet to get covered. If they are healthy, they won’t bother.

If only sick people show up, Obamacare is on a long walk off a short pier.

While the answers address online and in-person potential scams, the website itself has been reported to be rife with the potential for identity fraud.  When an applicant asks for assistance from a “navigator,” he or she must enter his location before being told that those allegedly trained to provide assistance may not yet be certified.

Navigators include illegal aliens and others with questionable backgrounds.

Congress was aware before the website launch that identity fraud had not been adequately protected against by those building Healthcare.gov.  Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), who is not running for re-election next year, predicted that Obamacare would be a “train wreck,” as did Speaker of the House John Beohner.

The privacy of medical information transmitted over the website reportedly cannot be guaranteed.

Some Americans do not plan on complying with the provisions of the Affordable Care Act because they believe it is unconstitutional, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s upholding of the law as a tax.  The majority of the court, however, ruled that the law was unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause, although the regime’s attorneys had contended that during oral argument.

Members of both political parties are seeking a one-year delay in the deadlines accompanying the individual mandate for all citizens to purchase insurance or pay a fine.  Republicans in the House of Representatives had supported a one-year delay following the government shutdown which began after the House funded all government programs and departments except Obamacare.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) said it is her “goal” to “fix the Affordable Care Act.”

The Healthcare.gov website asserts that people must “take responsibility” for their own health care:

When someone without health coverage gets urgent—often expensive—medical care but doesn’t pay the bill, everyone else ends up paying the price.

That’s why the health care law requires all people who can afford it to take responsibility for their own health insurance by getting coverage or paying a fee.

People without health coverage who pay the fee will also have to pay the entire cost of all their medical care. They won’t be protected from the kind of very high medical bills that can sometimes lead to bankruptcy.

The law calls the fine an “individual shared responsibility payment.”  When Obama campaigned in 2008, he said he believed that America’s wealth should be “spread around” to give everyone a chance to excel.  With federal subsidies, some Americans are paying for others’ insurance.

Many registrants are enrolling in state-sponsored Medicaid expansions rather than paying for a personal health plan, thwarting the premise of the law, which relies on young, healthy applicants to enroll and pay a premium each month.  Thousands of working Americans have lost the plans on which they relied and are now facing plans they don’t like with higher premiums and deductibles.   States reporting significant numbers of those affected are Tennessee, Florida, and California, while as many as 16,000,000 individuals may ultimately lose their current coverage.

Numerous senior citizens have received notifications that their doctors are no longer approved by their Medicare Advantage programs, the news of which is reportedly making them “sick.”

Obama had personally promised the public that with his health plan, “If you like your your insurance plan you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen in the future.”

Hundreds of employers have stopped providing insurance coverage to their employees.

Obama also said he was born in one Hawaii hospital, then changed it to another when the first hospital disputed his claim.

Of the higher insurance premiums, The Los Angeles Times gently said:

Thousands of Californians are discovering what Obamacare will cost them — and many don’t like what they see.

These middle-class consumers are staring at hefty increases on their insurance bills as the overhaul remakes the healthcare market. Their rates are rising in large part to help offset the higher costs of covering sicker, poorer people who have been shut out of the system for years.

Although recent criticism of the healthcare law has focused on website glitches and early enrollment snags, experts say sharp price increases for individual policies have the greatest potential to erode public support for President Obama’s signature legislation.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that Obama was not told of the lack of testing and preparedness to the Healthcare.gov website before its launch on October 1.  However, last Monday Obama said that the problems “are gonna get fixed” and that the law is “more than a website.”

Obama’s political action team, Organizing for America, is encouraging people interested in enrolling to attend a seminar today in Florissant, MO, adding, “Or else join us if you just want to show your support.”

A lawsuit which is gaining attention in the news challenges the subsidizing of applicants from states which chose not to establish their own insurance exchanges since they must use the federal Healthcare.gov website to buy insurance.

Sebelius is scheduled to testify to the Energy and Commerce Committee this week.  One lawmaker described the website failure as a product of “staggering incompetence.”

One writer accused the regime of producing “the biggest bait-and-switch in American history.”

When the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, they wrote, in part:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Several of their complaints against King George III were:

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

…For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

…For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

…In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

When campaigning for the presidency in 2008, Obama had promised to “fundamentally transform the United States of America,” one promise some say he kept.

While putative Vice President Joe Biden insisted just before the launch that Obamacare would see “regular people shopping for insurance they can finally afford, and purchasing security and peace of mind along with it,” others now say that Obamacare “is a fundamentally broken system.”

The U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1789, begins:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.