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We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

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Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#221

Post by JPKab »

dkhenry wrote: post #45
JPKab wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain to me how an exchange stood up by the government which enables you to find a private insurance company to purchase insurance from is involving the government in your use of the private insurance. The new system acts as a facilitator for people to purchase insurance on an open "exchange" market. The government has as much to do with what happens afterwards as the NYSE has to do with how my 80 shares of…

So the government has a monopoly over dolling out plan s on the exchange. In addition you need to be "cleared" by their system before you can get subsidies. Also there are subsidies, so they are directly paying for parts of healthcare. I mean before this I would call my insurence company and I would work with them for insurence. Now before I get insurence I or they need to interface with 30 government agencies to get…

Insurance is how you spell the word. Not insurence.

This is a Heritage Foundation plan from the 1990's. The Heritage Foundation is THE conservative think-tank in DC. It is extremely right-wing in its nature, which is why Bob Dole was for it, and Mitt Romney implemented it in Massachussetts. The only think liberal about Obamacare is its name.

As for "my party" I'm not a Democrat, and have voted for numerous conservative candidates. I find the current crop's anti-intellectualism and hatred of science to be repellent, so not so much these days. The fact that you assume that someone is a Democrat because they are correcting your ignorance on a government program's details is telling of your own partisanship.

The government mandates levels of coverage with car insurance. It works out well.

The purpose of mandated levels of coverage is to make sure that short sighted people don't buy a crappy minimum level of insurance, and then when they get something serious have bills that aren't covered. These high, un-covered bills go unpaid and are forced onto the rest of us through higher provider prices.

Sorry that it will take you five minutes longer to buy "insurence". In the meantime I will appreciate not seeing every hospital waiting room being used as a clinic for the uninsured workers of this country.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#224

Post by hga »

JPKab wrote: post #220
hga wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Anyone who thinks the current system is acceptable has never experienced the current system: they likely are covered by a large company's health insurance company, and haven't had to watch a family member try to buy themselves insurance. " Strange, a large number of us can remember buying individual "major medical" high deductible catastrophic coverage policies for quite reasonable sums of money, since they're true…

I had a HDHP from 2007-2009, combined with a tax-free HSA which I used for cash payments to providers. The problem is that you can't shop around with it. Nobody can tell you what they charge for anything. Regarding what doctors get paid by Medicare, CMS.gov released those statistics. They are pre-negotiated with providers, and are prices which allow them to profitably operate. It absolutely doesn't shift costs to oth…

WRT to CMS statistics, obviously the government never lies, especially with statistics.

As for what I'm a beneficiary of, since I started making serious money about when FICA taxes were massively raised in the early '80s (with the significant surplus going to the general budget, of course), based on my current health and genetics it will likely be at least three decades before I'm costing the system at net. Much longer than I expect the government to be able to keep all these balls in the air.

As for what I'm arguing for your uninsured family members, it's that Obamacare is not a solution (e.g. more likely to be access to a waiting line than healthcare), not that they shouldn't get insurance. The latter is pure hateful strawman fantasy, but I suppose par for the course of someone who suggests my opposition to Obamacare is born of racism.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#225

Post by hga »

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #217
hga wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think only the weakest level of "market-based" can apply here. The government has grossly intervened in the health care market since the WWII wage and price controls implicitly created the business model of employers playing for health care as non-controlled additional compensation, to the explicit post-WWII requirement for emergency rooms to treat everyone who entered. Now Medicare shifts quite a bit of additional…

insurance doesn't work unless it's universal. it just falls apart once either side picks and chooses. the young people don't buy it, and then they fall off their bike and they're screwed. and the insurers can't get stuck with just sick people, they have the whole pre-existing condition thing, so your kids get sick and you can't leave your job. a sick person looking for treatment is the opposite of everything that mak…

That's more than a bit of a strawman you've constructed.

I for one am willing to admit that I'm not smart enough to construct a path to a "free market" (a phrase I've never used in this discussion till this message) system after three quarters of a century of massive government intervention.

Heck, it would require an end to "democracy", and/or a few generations of radically changed public schooling, and/or "reeducation" camps for starters. Enough of the people want "socialism", and right now we're seeing the wisdom of Menken's "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.", after the Left has captured just about every institution that matters. The very idea of free market anything in the current environment is ludicrous.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#226

Post by d23 »

mseebach wrote: post #149
rtkwe wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem comes in when you factor in the danger of ever changing political and project climates. In this case if the Republican party had been successful in revoking the ACA whatever work the contractors were doing was now completely wasted through no cause or fault of their own. In your analogy it would be like you're successfully installing the panel and suddenly there's a massive tree completely shading the sol…

That's a risk of doing business. AirBnB and Uber are running similar risks against the political system (probably worse - they don't have ~half of the political system in their corner). Every other business is always risking that nobody will buy their product. Having any kind of promise of a guaranteed sale is a pretty luxurious position for any business. If the risk is large enough that nobody takes it, then the pro…

If a client came to us and said "hey, we have a project for you. You just have to build it and we can split whatever profit you make off of it", you can guess where we'd tell them to go. It's very different from basic business risk.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#227

Post by BlarfWobble »

coldcode wrote: post #150
BlarfWobble wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short answer is that it's not just a website. The website is just the front of a large, complex project that involves many other things. I have noticed how shocked people are when they hear how much custom software really costs. I don't know what you do for a living, but here's an example: A family member hears you make software, ask you if you can create a website for his business for a friendly fee. Sure, you t…

Tell him it's only $100, but he has to buy at least 100 copies. Then see what MS spent on Windows and how many copies they had to sell to pay for it.

It wasn't a parable about older family members being clueless when it comes to tech. People really can't imagine how a "new computer system" can cost 3 years and $90m to build, and are genuinely outraged, because it is so far removed from what they expect to be a normal or fair amount for a piece of software.

You pay a dollar for an app, $40 for a Sims game, maybe a few hundred for an OS and office suite, maybe $1500 for a fancy laptop. Sure you can imagine a 'website' might cost a few thousand, but _tens_of_millions_ ?? Surely, that is a disgraceful waste, right there.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#228

Post by [deleted] »

coldcode wrote: post #150
BlarfWobble wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short answer is that it's not just a website. The website is just the front of a large, complex project that involves many other things. I have noticed how shocked people are when they hear how much custom software really costs. I don't know what you do for a living, but here's an example: A family member hears you make software, ask you if you can create a website for his business for a friendly fee. Sure, you t…

Tell him it's only $100, but he has to buy at least 100 copies. Then see what MS spent on Windows and how many copies they had to sell to pay for it.

[deleted]

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#229

Post by mgkimsal »

pingswept wrote: post #166
mgkimsal wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you actually log in and do anything? I created accounts last week, and now can't log in with them, or can log in and get a blank white screen. I've just tried creating yet another count. It's hung up on 'step 3' ('please wait' - modal spinner, assuming it's emailing my email address). 3 minutes spinning so far. OK - it just got done. Got an email. Clicked the link. Logged in. Pause... Taken to https://www.healthc…

Just clicked the confirmation link that appeared in my email. Had to accept some terms and conditions. I can't actually get insurance this way because I already have insurance through my state's exchange (I pretended I lived in Maine for this test account, since my state doesn't use healthcare.gov). But my profile page loaded fine. This series of steps also took less than a minute. Anyway, sorry it's not working for…

I'm really trying to get my options. I'm in NC and I think they're limited. I'd like to get the official word from the horse's mouth, so to speak, and I can't get in.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#230

Post by JPKab »

hga wrote: post #224
JPKab wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a HDHP from 2007-2009, combined with a tax-free HSA which I used for cash payments to providers. The problem is that you can't shop around with it. Nobody can tell you what they charge for anything. Regarding what doctors get paid by Medicare, CMS.gov released those statistics. They are pre-negotiated with providers, and are prices which allow them to profitably operate. It absolutely doesn't shift costs to oth…

WRT to CMS statistics, obviously the government never lies, especially with statistics. As for what I'm a beneficiary of, since I started making serious money about when FICA taxes were massively raised in the early '80s (with the significant surplus going to the general budget, of course), based on my current health and genetics it will likely be at least three decades before I'm costing the system at net. Much long…

The CMS statistics are a lie? So because I suggest data for you to examine which may contradict your pre-existing beliefs, you immediately jump to "The government lies!" First off, its not statistics. Its raw data on payments to various providers. Feel free to examine it.

I never said you were racist. Not all Republicans are racists, just like not all Democrats are hippies. But all racists are Republicans, and all hippies are Democrats.

My family is better off with access to a waiting line than nothing at all. But you wouldn't know that.

BTW, every geezer on Medicare thinks they're entitled to it, just like every farmer getting a farm subsidy thinks he's entitled to it. There isn't a single person getting an entitlement check that doesn't rationalize some way they paid in more than they'll ever take out. Join the club.

Please enjoy your Fox news. It is after all the preferred news source of Medicare recipients who think that its only Socialism if people other than themselves get it.

Here is an article you posted in 2010 predicting economic doom in 2011 courtesy of Obama: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870411350457526...

You were wrong then, and you are wrong now.

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