Officials Say HealthCare.gov Site Now Performing Well 644
The much-discussed health care finance sign-up website HealthCare.gov has benefited from the flurry of improvements that have been thrown at it in the last several weeks. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid spokesman Aaron Albright told Fox News Saturday that "[w]ith the scheduled upgrades last night and tonight, we're on track to meet our stated goal for the site to work for the vast majority of users." CMM spokeswoman Julie Bataille. "said the installation of new servers Friday night helped improved the response times and error rates, even with heavier-than-usual weekend traffic." If you've used the site this weekend, what has your experience been like?
Officials say? (Score:1, Insightful)
If officials say it, that makes it official. No need to check.
Go forth and force men and 50-year old women to buy insurance for childbirth! Forward.
Here's What I Know (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm unemployed and without insurance. If I go to the dentist's office to get a small no-anesthesia filling, as I did last week, they will accept $116 from an insurance company but will charge me $167 for exactly the same procedure because I'm a cash payer. When an insurance company pays them, they deduct the difference between $167 and $116 as a "loss" to reduce their taxes. Obviously, they've got quite an incentive to do that.
It's not just dentist's offices. Those are the shenanigans going on with tens of thousands of health care providers across the US, it's to the tune of tens of billions of dollars of "losses" pulled out of thin air, and it has to fixed before any of this is going to improve. Subsidizing private insurance companies with taxpayer money and mandating that people sign up with them while allowing insurance companies to keep skimming profits out of the system and penalizing cash-payers is the wrong thing to do.
Re:Here's What I Know (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:define "performing well" (Score:-1, Insightful)
Re:define "performing well" (Score:5, Insightful)
Canada has more health care than Americans do, and they're not slaves.
Are you completely sure that health care is slavery?
Re:Officials say? (Score:5, Insightful)
there's no such thing as something cheaper than mandatory insurance
anyone who doesn't get insurance is someone who thinks they don't need insurance. while those who get insurance really need it. so costs are spread amongst fewer people and they go up, if you respect the "freedom" of some freeloaders to be stupid and irresponsible
then those assholes without insurance break their arm and get sick anyway, and then they avoid the bill because they can't afford it, and the taxpayer has to bail out the hospital
so you pay for it anyway, in the most wasteful, stupid way possible, and you pay for irresponsible freeloaders
that's why healthcare is such a joke in the usa and is so incredibly expensive
now forcing 50 year old to buy childbirth insurance does sound crazy so you fix that specific problem, you don't jettison the entire superior idea
any questions?
Re:Officials say? (Score:5, Insightful)
And those younger women are paying for old people's heart attacks. The old people are paying to prevent flu epidemics from getting younger males sick. And men tend to have a part in making babies and it is much cheaper to pay for IUDs and pills than kids. Especially unplanned ones.
Re:define "performing well" (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh stop it. You can go off into the wilds and stay away from the IRS, UPS, AT&T and likely the NSA. Very, very few people stay completely off the grid. If you want to have the benefits of civilization, then you have to pay for it. That said, the ACA isn't going to help (or hurt much), the entire system is screwed up six ways from Sunday, but if you want to have any chance of reasonable rates you have to spread the costs as far and as wide a possible.
Perhaps there should be a way to opt out - you sign a form (and get branded, RFID'ed, tatooed or whatever) and you don't get to go to the ER. You don't get Police or Fire protection. You don't get mail. You can live your life in whatever rugged fantasy world you create for yourself. Goodluckwiththat.
Re:Officials say? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Officials say? (Score:4, Insightful)
Young, rich, healthy people pay more so that the old, the poor, and the sick can get affordable coverage. Maybe you don't like that right now, but you'll change your mind if you ever get seriously ill, or lose your job, or see your retirement savings vanish into Wall Street's coffers. And if none of those things happen, then count yourself blessed and move on.
Re:Officials say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:define "performing well" (Score:5, Insightful)
Which of these other countries do you speak of that I would have gotten better treatment or a better outcome?
In any modern developed country other than the US, you would have gotten similar treatment and since we know you responded well to treatment, you'd have the same outcome. Obviously you can't get a better outcome than successful treatment.
For people without insurance, of course, the outcomes are often vastly different because in the US that means they'll likely have to delay treatment.
Re:Officials say? (Score:1, Insightful)
How can that be?
The president said "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan." He said it over and over, in a dozen different ways. Are you suggesting this thing the President said wasn't true?
Re:I tested it two weeks back (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason for the whole fiasco was they decided not to show the full retail price till people actually complete the eligibility because the politicians thought the sticker shock would be too much. That last minute change to hide the price till the income verification was done was the root cause of all problems. The income verification involves social security number, getting info from the hub etc etc. They could have rolled in income check and eligibility check even before the plan pricing was finalized. But that is all monday morning quarterbacking.
One of the first thing they did was to just open it all up for comparison shopping to reduce the load of window shoppers. Even now I am not sure how well the subsidy eligibility portion of the site is working. But for straight up comparison of plans and pricing, you could do it anytime. This alone is going to change the landscape of medical plans for everyone. Many small companies, people with "trustable" friend/broker etc were all buying health insurance blind. Pricing was very opaque and plans were not comparable at all. Right now so many people are figuring how trustable their friendly neighborhood broker had been.
Subsidy is nearly 100% at 32K income for a family of 4, sliding down to zero at 96K for a family of four. The median family income in USA is around 50K and around 75% of the people make less than 100K. Very few people with more than 100K were without health coverage prior to ACA/Obamacare. So vast majority of the 40 million Americans without healthcare would be eligible for subsidy. It is not going to be easy for the Republicans to roll back this program. No matter how bad the web site is, it would be impossible to go back to the bad old days of preexisting condition, "we will collect premium and cancel your policy if you get sick" health insurance company days.
Re:Officials say? (Score:3, Insightful)
And the same attitude led to an AIDS pandemic.
"If you can't afford to buy health care, don't breed"
I think you mean "don't be born".
Re:Officials say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:define "performing well" (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't want to participate in this society, don't. Sure, none of the civilized countries in Europe will take you, but maybe you can get into Rwanda. Then you can see firsthand what actual slavery looks like.
Re:I played with it just now (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a difference between "The administration f-ed up the website and they deserve legitimate criticism." vs. "See, this proves that Obamacare sucks." There's also a difference between criticizing Fox when it really goes right-wing wack0, and just generic bashing because you don't like their slant.
Ladies and Gentlemen, you may now remove your blinders. Yes, ALL of you.
Re:Officials say? (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn straight you should count yourself lucky.
There are seriously terrible things out there. Cancer. Parkinson's. MS. But do go on. Complain about paying more than your share, you always-healthy person, with your great genes, with your great personal character and intelligence that have kept you away from drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, with your even temperament that has shielded you from depression. Complain, with your good job, where you aren't exposed to toxins, which pays for your good house in your nice neighborhood, where gang violence is the farthest thing from your mind, where you have a great grocery store that enables your fully organic diet, where you have a great gym just up the road that you work out at five days a week.
The whole point of insurance is that we all get screwed a little, so that when someone gets really fucking boned, they don't get screwed sideways on top of it. Even a perfect person like you can fall off a bike or get hit by a car.
Of course, you're also right. We're all getting screwed way more than we should because we didn't have balls to say to hell with wall street and insist on a single-payer system.
Re:Privacy Issues (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not what they know about you, it's what whoever decides to hack their site with untested security knows about you.
Re:Officials say? (Score:4, Insightful)
if you don't get insurance, and break your arm, you avoid the bill because you can't pay it, or you declare bankruptcy
It's called putting money aside each month and saving for a rainy day instead of always eating out, always buying the latest gadgets and living high on the hog while expecting that other people will cover your ass in a jam or as I like to put it, "Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."
Re: Officials say? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're called appropriations bills and they're freely available online.
Re:Officials say? (Score:5, Insightful)
>That's called something else that was tried numerous times in the 20th century and proven a failure.
the american system is a failure. we pay ridiculous multiples as compared to other countries with universal healthcare/ mandatory insurance, and we have lower quality of care than them
what you call a failure has been proven to be a success in all of our social and economic peers
this is where you trot out out horror stories from countries with socialized medicine. as if the american model has no horror stories, including avoiding the doctor until it is too late because you can't afford him
socialized medicine is not perfect. it's just a hell of a lot better than the american joke of a system
for a lower level of care/poor outcomes (Score:2, Insightful)
Apparently you have missed the whole point of the ACA. Which was to make the best of the best health care we have here in the US available for a larger group of people.
Re: define "performing well" (Score:4, Insightful)
We have the best doctors in the world, so I'm not sure how any of those countries could be *better*.
I would rather be seen by an average doctor early in my illness instead of a superstar doctor late into it.
Re:Officials say? (Score:2, Insightful)
"socialized medicine is not perfect. it's just a hell of a lot better than the american joke of a system"
Then why to the rich from various countries with socialized medicine come to the US for treatment again?
If the site was broken because the law is flawed.. (Score:4, Insightful)
...now that the site works, does that mean that the law isn't flawed? Or are the people who made that argument just going to backtrack now?
Re:Officials say? (Score:5, Insightful)
what about police services?
do we have to do a financial means test before cops answer 911?
what about fire services?
do we have to a financial means test before the firemen turn on the hose?
healthcare is same necessary fundamental service, where no questions are asked and response is automatic
therefore it must be paid for in the same way as police and fire, and understood in the same way: a fundamental necessary government service, the way it is all of our economic and social peers (who pay fractions of our healthcare rates, because their policy matches the reality of what healthcare is)
Re: Well (Score:0, Insightful)
Fortunately repeating your lies is easy. Look there they are.
Re:Officials say? (Score:3, Insightful)
Citing a Salon article that exposes Fox News? Pot, meet kettle...
Really? Salon certainly has a liberal slant, but Fox News regularly misleads its viewers and employs complete nutjobs as contributors. Maybe you could compare Salon to the WSJ but the only Liberalish news org I could think to compare Fox to is the Health section at the Huffington Post.