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?
Privacy Issues (Score:5, Funny)
To test it, they want you to put in all kinds of personal information. No thanks.
Re:Privacy Issues (Score:5, Informative)
To test it, they want you to put in all kinds of personal information. No thanks.
In the first release, a significant percentage of people who put in their info, checked out some plans, and then cancelled out of it all were accidentally signed up for Medicaid. Hope that bug got fixed.
But even the government doesn't claim the site is secure yet. Glad I'm not legally required to use it before they get around to they security audit they skipped (also legally required, but laws are for peons).
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I love how you say accidental.
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Oh don't worry, it connects directly to the IRS and the SSA, so there's plenty of your PII already in there in the event of a breach.
Re: Privacy Issues (Score:3)
Re:Privacy Issues (Score:5, Informative)
To test it, they want you to put in all kinds of personal information. No thanks.
You joke, but it is true. At the last minute, the government added a http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/obamacare-healthcaregov-registration-98671.html [slashdot.org]">requirement to force people to register before they could see prices.
Foruntately, these guys came along and partially liberated that information. [thehealthsherpa.com] It still isn't detailed - when I looked up what was available to me, there were about 20 different plans all priced within $10 of each other, but no further details.
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Uh, I dunno why that first link is effedup. Here it is again:
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/obamacare-healthcaregov-registration-98671.html [politico.com]
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.
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
I saw the same issue when I turned 50. The cash price for a colonoscopy was between 3 & 4k (didn't get an exact figure), but they settled for $1000 from my insurance company.
Re:Here's What I Know (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Here's What I Know (Score:4, Informative)
Go to a different dentists. There are plenty of them out there now that DONT accept insurance. The cost of doing business with insurance companies is too high. My wife works in the field, and for every dentist, there are 2 to 3 assistants, 1 or 2 hygienists and then 3 to 4 people to deal with billing and the insurance. Stop accepting insurance and now they only need 1 person for billing. Suddenly procedures are cheaper. As long as you're not getting a crown, they can be significantly cheaper (crowns are mostly made out of the office at a lab)
Overheard at CGI... (Score:5, Funny)
BOSS: Our mandate is to make this site work for the vast majority of users in two weeks. Otherwise we don't get a bonus. And by "we" I mean "I". ... well, I just thought you could hire a few competent engineers for a change. That might get the job done.
ENGINEER ERNIE: But there are millions of users! Right now the site can only handle 200 simultaneous users, and we just don't have the hardware for more. If we work our asses off and spend a bunch of money on servers, we might be able to get it up to ten thousand. That's nowhere near the vast majority.
BOSS: Damn it, I promised my son I'd buy him a Cessna for his birthday. I need that bonus! You guys had better think of something quickly.
ENGINEER DAVE: I think I have an idea...
BOSS: Spit it out, man!
ENGINEER DAVE:
BOSS: Look, I tried that. It was nixed by the big shots -- they don't want to develop a reputation for competence, okay? You've gotta figure something out that works with our current human capital.
ENGINEER ERNIE: Uh, I have an idea. Say again what the mandate was?
BOSS: We have to make the site work for the vast majority of users in two weeks.
ENGINEER ERNIE: That's what I thought. So if we just drive away all the users right now, then we will have no users in two weeks, right?
BOSS: Yeah... how does that help?
ENGINEER ERNIE: Well, what's the vast majority of zero?
[Silence]
ENGINEER DAVE: But... but...
BOSS: Shut up and start sabotaging the code, or you're fired.
ENGINEERS: Yes, sir!
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Sadly this doesn't seem fictional.
I played with it just now (Score:5, Informative)
Now, the actual registration process is probably more complex, but if the rest of the website responds as beautifully as it did for me during those dozen screens I saw, then they really did a good job fixing it.
Re:I played with it just now (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, I tried it based on your post. In Chrome it brought up no quotes at all, I saw Ghostery block some Google analytics. I fired up the dreaded IE and after entering my zip and hitting enter I had a series of potential quotes in seconds.
Yup, this is WAY better than it was before when I couldn't get past the front page. I'll be pinging a few of my friends who need this to check it out too.
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In any case, that's just the front end. Apparently there's another 30% that needs to be completed. [nytimes.com]
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Nice troll. That article was published on 11/19, which is 11 days ago.
And he was talking about needing to build the accounting, reconciling and payment systems -- which won't really come into play until January. They have nothing to do with the general public who is signing up.
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That part of the site was never all that bad. Its the registration process that had issues.
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.
Officials... (Score:2)
Resolves as 127.0.0.1 everywhere outside the US? (Score:2)
C:\>ping www.healthcare.gov
Pinging bh.georedirector.akadns.net [127.0.0.1] with 32 bytes of data:
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Same here, strangely enough. Looks like a measure to avoid load caused by foreigners that got curious from all the bad reporting that this website got.
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It resolves to e8132.dscb.akamaiedge.net (23.7.74.194) in the U.S. if you care to take a gander. Not to say it won't reject you when you get there via IP too.
I tested it two weeks back (Score:5, Informative)
Basically all accounts created in the first week ten days must be abandoned and fresh account created. If you try to continue with the old account, it would retrieve an old incomplete corrupt data file and you are screwed. But start a new account, new email id, and it would be a breeze for most people. If you want to check your subsidy etc I heard there were trouble. Also heard that most troubled were older people unfamiliar with internet and web pages and were intimidated by all the new fangled terms and legalese.
Two days back got an email saying, "why don't you try again?". I logged in opened a chat window and asked "williams" to cancel that account. He said dont bother it will time out and die by itself.
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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.
DoubleClick and Optimizely in use. (Score:3)
Watching the home page load [healthcare.gov], this shows up:
[17:06:07.510] GET https://stats.g.doubleclick.net/dc.js [doubleclick.net] [HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified 40ms]
[17:06:06.192] GET https://cdn.optimizely.com/js/166688199.js [optimizely.com] [HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified 40ms]
Hm.
Re:DoubleClick and Optimizely in use. (Score:5, Informative)
WTF?
Optimizely is a complicated scheme for serving slightly different versions of a site to different people and seeing what that does to usage patterns. This allows testing different advertising approaches, or field-testing new versions of a site to a fraction of the user base. It's not inherently evil.
DoubleClick code is being loaded because HealthCare.gov uses the Google Tag Manager [google.com]. ("Tag" in this context means "web bug", not "hashtag".) Google Tag Manager is a system for managing sites that have so much web tracking that they need a management system to keep it all straight. The Tag Manager itself doesn't track anything; it just loads other code that does, based on an configuration stored on Google servers. Each tracking code source has its very own privacy policy and intrusiveness. HealthCare.gov is trying (at least for me) to load CrazyEgg, Google Analytics, Doubleclick, and ChartBeat. Which trackers are loaded is controlled by Google's config. Google generates a page of Javascript for each site and injects all the tracking code. This replaces the old approach of putting tracking code directly into web pages. Here's what it injects into Healthcare.gov [googletagmanager.com]. (Minified Javascript, not easy to read.)
Google here has the power, should they decide to use it, to extract any data they want from any page or form in Healthcare.gov by downloading a suitable tracker. Whether you think this is evil depends on how much you trust Google.
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Tried to Sign Up, Already Frustrated (Score:5, Informative)
"The username is case sensitive. Choose a username that is 6-74 characters long and must contain a lowercase or capital letter, a number, or one of these symbols _.@/-"
If they are having problems explaining the most basic things, I'm not hopeful.
The site is also less secure for me because none of my standard, extremely secure, never before had a problem with them passwords will work for it. That will force me to write it down, making the site inherently less secure.
5 Minutes later...
LOL. What an absolute piece of garbage of a web site. I tried to change my username to just the username of my email address and the site says it's invalid. It should be valid based on the instructions, but no joy. If they actually want the username to contain a number, then that's a joke; it's something I've never seen before on ANY website EVER.
WHO LAID OUT THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THIS SITE? JOE BIDEN? HAVE THEY NEVER EVEN USED THE INTERNET?
When sites come up with new, unusual standards for usernames and passwords (e.g. must contain a %, *, or ^), then they are making the site less secure because they are increasing the odds that people will have to write down their usernames and passwords.
Re:Tried to Sign Up, Already Frustrated (Score:4, Informative)
it won't accept my e-mail address as my username, even though it would appear to fit the criteria.
"The username is case sensitive. Choose a username that is 6-74 characters long and must contain a lowercase or capital letter, a number, or one of these symbols _.@/-"
If they are having problems explaining the most basic things, I'm not hopeful.
It looks like the period is the invalid character. Interestingly, having a period in the username gives a different error message than the one used for any other invalid character. I'm guessing they're scanning the string in two separate places, and forgot to remove the one that doesn't like periods.
When sites come up with new, unusual standards for usernames and passwords (e.g. must contain a %, *, or ^), then they are making the site less secure because they are increasing the odds that people will have to write down their usernames and passwords.
What are you talking about? The site doesn't require you to use special characters in your password. It just says 8-20 characters, containing one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, and one number. That's pretty standard.
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"It can't contain your username or any of these characters = ? ( ) ‘ " / \ &"
It just so happens that I use one of those characters in my standard secure password. I've never had a problem with that character before except for one site (which ironically is my bank, and which forces me to use a password that is less secure than my standard password due to its banning special characters.
Seriously, all of these different password standards are a huge cause of se
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That's very different from "must contain a %, *, or ^", which is what you said in your first post. Lots of sites have similar requirements.
Why do you have a "standard secure password"? That's an oxymoron. If you're really concerned about security, you shouldn't be using the same password on multiple sites. Just get a password safe.
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In terms of standard passwords, I'd like to introduce you to the ordinary person who can't handle a different password for every site. I can't for sites that I don't regularly visit, like healthcare.gov.
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It just so happens that I use one of those characters in my standard secure password.
Why are you using the same password (or even very similar passwords) on multiple sites, especially for sites that involve sensitive personal healthcare and financial data? Are you aware that this very practice is the source of greatly increased rates of personal information compromise and identity theft, as compromising one set of credentials makes it much easier to access other systems? Further, are you aware that you're rolling the dice every time you create an account anywhere when it comes to whether th
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P.S. I am trying to distribute insight into how ordinary people think and work. Based on comments like yours, that is something that seems to be sorely needed.
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Based on comments like yours, you're not not a normal human being. You are a lazy human being. Normal people might ask "gee, how might I solve this problem?" Instead, you're adopting the "oh no, it's too hard" attitude.
I've been working with normal people who manage to memorize multiple passwords for fifteen years. They aren't programmers, either, although some people are naturally better at this than others. For those who have a lot of passwords to manage, there are a wealth of options available, including
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Deal with it.
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How Much Would Obamacare Cost the First Family? (Score:2, Informative)
If one plugs the First Family's income and ages [staticflickr.com] into the web-based DC Health Link Calculator [dchealthlink.com], the annual health care cost estimates for the Obama household come out to be $20,125 (Bronze), $19,537 (Silver), and $21,902 (Gold) [staticflickr.com], not a good deal at all when compared to the starting-at-under-$200-a-month family health coverage [opm.gov] available to the President and Congress through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program [opm.gov]. By the way, if the Obama family members were 10 years older and their combined household inc
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You know how we could have avoided all this mess?
Single-payer health care.
Instead we're implementing a Plan B that Republicans have been actively working against at both the State and Federal levels.
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With that viewpoint, you'll make it far in an imaginary world.
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So what? (Score:2)
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?
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*crickets*
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:define "performing well" (Score:5, Informative)
Not only does every first world country other than the US have some sort of universal healthcare/single payer system, the US spends more than every other country for healthcare for a lower level of care/poor outcomes.
USA! USA!
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Not to mention the 20% or so that have no coverage at all.
Private healthcare FTW!!
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.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/health-care-costs-_n_3998425.html [huffingtonpost.com]
http://kff.org/health-costs/ [kff.org]
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/10/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries.html [pbs.org]
I'm glad you base your outlook on your anecdotal evidence. You're part of the problem.
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.
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Are you completely sure that health care is slavery?
War is peace.
Ignorance is strength.
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: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.
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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.
Or as Adam Smith said, those who benefit from society have an obligation to pay for the costs of running society.
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.
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Re:Officials say? (Score:5, Informative)
Because previously, those "cheap" plans covered almost nothing and were pure profit for insurance companies:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Wire/2013/1029/Millions-losing-health-plans-under-Obamacare.-Did-president-mislead-video [csmonitor.com]
People are now paying for coverage they should have been previously receiving.
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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.
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Young people are the poorest age group. Middle aged and older people are the wealthiest age groups. Why should relatively poor young folks continue to pay more and more and more to subsidize their relatively rich elders?
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you aren't immune to sickness and accidents
if you don't get insurance, and break your arm, you avoid the bill because you can't pay it, or you declare bankruptcy
and that makes you an irresponsible freeloader, because the rest of us have to bail out the hospital for unpaid bills with our taxes
insurance rates should be, and are, graded according to risk, like life insurance or car insurance, so chill out and get your health insurance
unless you are telling us your real motivation is to be an irresponsible free
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:4, Informative)
most people live paycheck-to-paycheck. most people can't put away $100,000 for the cancer treatment
what most people do is get insurance, as this is the most financially responsible and intelligent thing to do, and your plan in your comment is bonkers and not financially responsible nor intelligent
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
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)
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"And if none of those things happen, then count yourself blessed and move on."
You mean count yourself screwed, as you've paid well-beyond personal-actuarial-risk level money. As designed.
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.
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Your personal story contradicts the tales spun by the laws' proponents. Are you sure you exist?
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What you say is anecdotal evidence. Insurance is based on statistics and actuarials. There is 50% chance you would have ended up bankrupt if you actually had to file medical claims. Have you filed substantial claims exceeding the premium any year? Was it paid without hassle?
More than half of the people who ended up bankrupt because of medical costs, had health insurance and thought they wo
Where you paying the entire cost (Score:5, Interesting)
At least not in my case. I was paying $165 for a better than platinum level plan.
Were you paying the entire bill for that plan? Did you have a large deductible? Most people that get health insurance have a major portion of the tab picked up by their employer. They think they pay $165 or whatever their price is because they never see the actual full cost of the plan. I've spent a LOT of time looking at health insurance plans in recent years. I have NEVER seen anyone get a plan with that much in the way of features for that kind of price unless they were paying a huge deductible. I had a catastrophic coverage plan a few years ago that had a $5000 deductible but had pretty good coverage after that and the price was around $150/month. But that first $5000 was entirely on me.
I run a manufacturing company. We provide health insurance for our employees and have picked up 50% of the cost. Our group rate for a pretty good 80/20 HMO with a zero deductible (roughly equivalent to a gold plan) cost about $525 per employee per month. Net cost to our employees is around $260/month since the company pays half. The plans we've found under the new regulations for the Affordable Care Act will give similar coverage for about $200-300/month (varies with age but always a lot less than current cost) or almost a 40% reduction in total premium over what we pay now. Furthermore a lot of our employees will qualify for subsidies so the coverage will cost even less.
While this whole roll out has been a fiasco, at the end of the day the people who work for me are mostly going to end up with similar or better coverage for less money. Furthermore their coverage will not be tied to their employment with us which is LONG overdue. No one should EVER lose health coverage just because they lost a job.
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There are millions of people like you, who thought they had "platinum coverage", checked themselves into a hospital and ended up with more than 200K in bills. The insurance company would dredge up fine print and limit the total pay out to some small number leaving the policy holder holding the bag.
Re:Where you paying the entire cost (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, this happened to my wife before we got married. She had "student insurance" at her college, but when she actually needed to use it for surgery, she found out she'd be on the hook for half the bill -about $10k almost 20 years ago. Fortunately she found out before actually scheduling the surgery. Since she's from Germany she was able to head home and get it done under the German "socialist" program. Bottom line under the old market was that you'd pay $800/month (at least in FL) for full/platinum-style insurance that actually provides the same level of coverage as a good employer plan. In most cases, if you were under private insurance, only a major medical/catastrophic policy makes sense -- true insurance rather than health-care funding.
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And coverage for substance abuse treatment -- mandatory for non-drinkers and non-drug users.
Your reward for sobriety? You get to pay for some else's addiction. Congrats.
Re:Officials say? (Score:4, Informative)
The insurance companies knew the grandfathering, so they very carefully moved people out of their grandfathered plans in 2011, 12 and 13. There is a class action lawsuit in California now, about policy holders claiming that they were not told they are losing the grandfathered protection status by changing policies in 2011, 12 and 13 by these insurance companies.
Re:Officials say? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm neither defending nor criticizing the president, but that statement was clearly a bit of hyperbole, and you'd have to be an idiot to take it at face value. Why do I say that?
1) The statement was made about plans that existed prior to the ACA going into effect
2) One of the major problems that the ACA was created to address was the fact that insurance companies could (and routinely did) cancel people's policies for any reason at all.
3) Laws cannot be made to retroactively force people/companies to do something.
So I think the point was, there was nothing in the law that could cause you to lose the coverage you had. However, there was no way to prevent insurance companies from cancelling policies on their own whim before the ACA went into effect.
Re:Officials say? (Score:4, Interesting)
Gawd, the amount of Obama boot licking going in that post is unbelievable.
You guy lied. He lied deliberately. Democrats believed it and supported the law. Now, you say only idiots believed it. Well, that just happens to be the Democrats in Congress.
Yes, yes, yes, how could I be so blind??? Romneycare GOOD, Obamacare BAD. I see the LIGHT!!!!
You do realise, don't you, that Obamacare IS Romneycare with some more of the 'gotchas' removed?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The main reason the premiums of those health insurance policies cost less is that they were bad policies. They didn't cover you for some of the problems you would be most likely to have, and when they did cover you, you wind up with enormous deductibles, co-payments and exclusions.
In the insurance industry, they used to call them "herd of buffaloes" policy. They only cover you if you get run over by a herd of buffaloes, and then only if it's on Main Street, and only if it's at noon.
But actually, most people
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Well, we know there are people who were receiving coverage for cancer and heart conditions who had their policies yanked from them because the government said they were junk. These same people also complained that they cannot find affordable replacements and they won't have access to their doctors.
So while it might be easy on your conscious to say the government swooped in and saved those ignorant bastards, the reality is a little different. Some of those plans, most of them were exactly opposite of what yo
Re:Officials say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (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.
Re: (Score:2)
Making people pay for their own medical bills would be fair only if nobody got hurt unless it was completely their fault.
What if someone else hits you on the road, or makes you sick, or passes germs to you?
I think it's fairer for the pain to be spread in that case, to make it more bearable.
Hell, sickness is a common enemy because of the contagion factor and it's in the public interest to pay for it at public expense.
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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?
Actually mixing the risk pool of baby bearing younger women with 50 year old males is a good deal for the older males. The older males have much higher rates of heart attacks and hypertension compared to the young mothers. Childbirths are cheap compared to the statin drugs, angioplasty and bypass surgeries. Split the risk pools, you will find the males insurance rate go up. Have you seen the life insurance rates for men and women? Men pay higher premium because their risk pool is sequestered from women, who
Re: (Score:3)
Sounds like bad insurance. We just had a kid and paid $100 plus $100/day for the hospital. Came to $400 total. We've spent more than that on pictures in two years. And my insurance isn't even all that good. My previous company's was much, much better.
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Why should I be forced to engorge some dick full of money when I know they will spend most of their time and efforts denying their payment obligations when I do get sick?
you really didn't read my comment did you?
Re:Officials say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Officials say? (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not think a civilized person can think "let them die in the streets" to be an option.
CNN's 2012 GOP Presidential Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yva0VSN1_T4&t=41s [youtube.com]
Wolf Blitzer: Congressman [Ron Paul], are you saying that society should just let him die? ::laughter::
Audience: Yeah!
Ron Paul: No.
Audience: YEAH!
Audience:
Ron Paul: I practiced medicine, ummm, before we had medicaid in the early 1960s, when I got out of medical school.
I practiced in Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio and the churches took care of them.
The audience members didn't have to dissemble like Ron Paul did.
Re: (Score:3)
This is a good idea, but it touches on one of the main problems with the whole US healthcare system: that the costs in general are wildly high and not anchored to reality. e.g. $15 for administering a Tylenol to a hospital patient, $25 for an alcohol cotton swab, etc. Clearly that's not what those items cost, so what are what are we really paying for? Yes, they could add an "uninsured persons supplement" to the bill, but it would get lost in the shit storm of crazy prices already on there.
In case you th
Re: (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".
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Re: Officials say? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're called appropriations bills and they're freely available online.
Re: Officials say? (Score:5, Funny)
that's one smart bloodworm.