Obamacare Tag

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is holding a hearing Wednesday morning at 9:30am with top administration Information Technology officials to examine the rollout of HealthCare.gov. You can watch below. Among the issues likely to be addressed at the hearing are security and testing of...

The chief official responsible for managing the trouble-plagued HealthCare.gov website project says he was unaware of a memo that outlined several potentially significant security issues before he’d signed off on the recommendation for the website’s launch. The House Oversight and Reform Committee interviewed Henry Chao, CMS’s top operational official for the project, on November 1^st in a closed-door session.  Late Monday, the committee released the following statement and several documents from that interview.

Henry Chao, the Deputy Chief Information Officer and Deputy Director of the Office of Information Services at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), testified during a November 1 transcribed interview with Committee investigators that he was surprised he was never made aware of a September 3, 2013, memo outlining serious security vulnerabilities present in the Federal Facilitated Marketplaces (the “exchange”). Chao, CMS’s top operational official for the Federal exchange testified he found it “disturbing” that he had been excluded from a memo about significant problems with security. The September 3, 2013, memo that Chao testified he had previously never seen was authored by CMS Chief Information Officer Tony Trenkle. The memo noted six security problems, two of which were described as “open high findings.” Chao initially expressed disbelief when first shown the memo during his transcribed interview. In reviewing the memo, Chao agreed that one finding, “presented a significant risk to the system,” and did not know if it had been corrected.

The statement is followed by several excerpts from the interview, which reveals that “lines of communication about security issues prior to launch may not have been working properly.”

Booking fictitious sales, or sales that are contingent, falls within a common definition of accounting fraud. In yet another example of how poorly things are going, the Obama administration will count as enrollees people who have completed the application process, but not yet paid, via WaPo:

The fight over how to define the new health law’s success is coming down to one question: Who counts as an Obamacare enrollee? Health insurance plans only count subscribers as enrolled in a health plan once they’ve submited [sic] a payment. That is when the carrier sends out a member card and begins paying doctor bills. When the Obama administration releases health law enrollment figures later this week, though, it will use a more expansive definition. It will count people who have purchased a plan as well as  those who have a plan sitting in their online shopping cart but have not yet paid. “In the data that will be released this week, ‘enrollment’ will measure people who have filled out an application and selected a qualified health plan in the marketplace,” said an administration official, who requested anonymity to frankly describe the methodology.

Does this mean I have to pay for all the stuff in my "cart"? To top it off, James O'Keefe mounted an undercover operation which caught a "navigator" trainee suggesting a fraudulent application be submitted:

Lori Gottlieb, a writer at The Atlantic found out that she can't keep her plan even though she liked it, and the new one will cost $5400 more. Writing in The NY Times, she explained that her friends insisted her sacrifice was small compared to easing the suffering of millions helped by Obamacare, Daring to Complain About Obamacare:

THE Anthem Blue Cross representative who answered my call told me that there was a silver lining in the cancellation of my individual P.P.O. policy and the $5,400 annual increase that I would have to pay for the Affordable Care Act-compliant option: now if I have Stage 4 cancer or need a sex-change operation, I’d be covered regardless of pre-existing conditions. Never mind that the new provider network would eliminate coverage for my and my son’s long-term doctors and hospitals. The Anthem rep cheerily explained that despite the company’s — I paraphrase — draconian rates and limited network, my benefits, which also include maternity coverage (handy for a 46-year-old), would “be actually much richer.”

I, of course, would be actually much poorer. And it was this aspect of the bum deal that, to my surprise, turned out to be a very unpopular thing to gripe about.

NBC's Chuck Todd was the interviewer who elicited Obama's weak non-apology last Thursday. But Todd got the distinct impression that Obama "does not believe he lied" when he made those promises about keeping your plan and keeping your doctor, period. Todd adds:

I thought what was revealing in that answer, when I asked him that direct question about this, was this a political lie that you started to believe it, was he talked about well, you know, it turns out we had trouble in crafting the law.

John Nolte at Breitbart finds that "bordering on pathological," in light of the almost overwhelming evidence that Obama knew very well that what he said would turn out to be untrue:

Obama's brazen and reckless lying is bad enough. But if Todd is correct (and I think he is) that Obama doesn't believe or understand that he lied, that means it can and will happen again.

It's not difficult to predict that it will happen again, because this is hardly the first time it has happened. But in order to understand what's going on here, it helps to understand that Obama is a man of the left, and that he is demonstrating the tried-and-true leftist practice known as doublethink, as described by George Orwell in his masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell wrote that “doublethink” requires:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies...to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed.

What do you call 8-9 million people losing health care coverage they like in a nation of 300 million? A rounding error? Actually, probably more like 15 million at the low end, several tens of millions at the high end. But I'm not going to quibble over a few million people here or there. You know who else didn't quibble over a few million people here or there? Via MaggotAtBroadAndWall in the Tip Line

The first minute of his clip needs to be embedded on every blog, facebook page, etc. to ensure that everyone knows with unequivocal certainty that Obama deliberately and repeatedly lied to facilitate passing Obamacare under fraudulent conditions. Everybody in his administration was complicit in the fraud. As was much of academia.

Transcript via John Nolte who also has a longer video clip:

As efforts move forward toward an end of November deadline to fix the troubled healthcare.gov website, new issues are being revealed in the process, according to a report from Reuters/via Yahoo: The Obama administration's HealthCare.gov adviser Jeffrey Zients said on Friday that the trouble-plagued federal healthcare website...

Obama promised, repeatedly, that you could keep your plan if you like it.  Period. When called out on that, he tried to deny such a categorical promise, the video notwithstanding. Politifact gave him a "Pants on Fire" rating for trying to make the promise conditional:

According to Obama, "What we said was you can keep (your plan) if it hasn’t changed since the law passed." But we found at least 37 times since Obama’s inauguration where he or a top administration official made a variation of the pledge that if you like your plan, you can keep it, and we never found an instance in which he offered the caveat that it only applies to plans that hadn’t changed after the law’s passage. And seven of those 37 cases came after the release of the HHS regulations that defined the "grandfathering" process, when the impact would be clear.... We rate his claim Pants on Fire.

Tonight Obama said he was "sorry" that some Americans have had their health insurance plans dropped after his repeated assurances that they could keep their plan if they liked it. From NBC News:

President Obama said Thursday that he is "sorry" that some Americans are losing their current health insurance plans as a result of the Affordable Care Act, despite his promise that no one would have to give up a health plan they liked.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified before the Senate Finance Committee this morning on the troubled rollout of HealthCare.gov. Not surprisingly, Sebelius was pressed on the President's promise that "if you like your health plan, you can keep it," a promise that's been repeated in various forms numerous times, including on the White House website. Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas addressed the issue with Secretary Sebelius. "We know that lying to Congress is a crime, but unfortunately lying to the American people is not," Cornyn said. "I'd just like to ask you a simple true or false question. Is that statement on the White House website true? Or is it false?" Watch Sebelius' response below. And in another exchange, Cornyn addressed with Sebelius the issue of background checks for Obamacare navigators.  Navigators can assist individuals in exploring coverage options on the Marketplace, "including completing eligibility and enrollment forms." "Isn't it true that there is no federal requirement for navigators to undergo a criminal background check, even though they will receive sensitive personal information from the individuals they help sign up for the Affordable Care Act?" Sebelius calmly responded, "That is true. States could add an additional, um, background checks and other features, but it is not part of the federal requirement." "So a convicted felon could be a navigator and could acquire sensitive personal information from an individual unbeknownst to them," Cornyn pressed.

Last week, White House press secretary Jay Carney admitted that Obamacare would force around 15 million people -  5% of the US population - to drop their current insurance. This number doesn't seem like a big deal to him, however:

“That’s the universe we’re talking about, 5 percent of the population,” Carney described. “In some of the coverage of this issue in the last several days, you would think that you were talking about 75 percent or 80 percent or 60 percent of the American population.”

That number is close to some other estimates for the individual market, but does not include people whose employers drop coverage, multiplying that number several fold. But how many people is 15 million? Is it really such a small number, something we shouldn't care about? Let's put it in perspective, and visualize 15 million people:

1. The combined population of 13 states

Yes, you read that correctly. 15 million is approximately the number of total people living in Wyoming, Vermont,  North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, New Hampshire,  Maine, Hawaii, Idaho, and West Virginia combined.  And more than all of the New England states!

Hey, remember when Nancy Pelosi triumphantly predicted that Obamacare would allow artists to have health insurance without worrying about their day jobs?

Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or, eh, a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance....

Nancy Pelosi Helath Care Will Give up More of... by GWHH19 It's a dream come true, and you are subsidizing it, as this NY Times spotlight piece about two artists in Albequerque who quality for free Obamacare plans demonstrates:

Elisabeth and Mark Horst, artists in Albuquerque who earn $24,000 a year between them, qualified for a zero-premium plan.

I have nothing against the Horsts. Living and painting in Albuquerque is a dream for many people. But why should the taxpayers have to subsidize what clearly is a lifestyle choice? The Horsts are not exactly uneducated or without choices in their lives. Here's a part of Mark Horst's bio at his art website:

Mark Horst grew up in small town Minnesota. He studied pottery and printmaking in high school and college, but his encounter with Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker led to years of very different work. After earning a Ph.D. in theology from Yale University, he spent time teaching and working toward neighborhood renewal in south Minneapolis. He pursued the craft of painting and drawing at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the New York Studio School. He lives in Albuquerque. If paint were a means of freezing time and protecting us from the dangerous life of the spirit, I would put down my brushes. But, for me, painting is a way of breaking time’s grip and setting loose something wild and strong.

Elizabeth also is highly educated and closed her psychology practice to paint:

Heritage came out with a disturbing report on its blog last night that highlighted another security concern with the Obamacare website, in which a user evaluating his health insurance options was presented with downloadable letters that contained insurance eligibility information about other people. https://twitter.com/Heritage/status/396796928949620737 From The Foundry:

[Justin] Hadley, a North Carolina father, buys his insurance on the individual market. His insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, directed him to HealthCare.gov in a cancellation letter he received in September. After multiple attempts to access the problem-plagued website, Hadley finally made it past the registration page Thursday. That’s when he was greeted with downloadable letters about eligibility — for two people in South Carolina. (Screenshot below.) The letters, dated October 8, acknowledge receipt of an application to the Health Insurance Marketplace and the eligibility of family members to purchase health coverage. One of the letters was addressed to Thomas Dougall, a lawyer from Elgin, SC.

Both Hadley and Heritage spoke with Dougall about the situation.  Dougall had apparently registered on healthcare.gov in early October but had decided not to sign up for a plan.  He had not seen the aforementioned letter until Hadley had shown it to him. Not surprisingly, Dougall said, “I want my personal information off of that website.” Hadley and Dougall have both contacted various representatives with healthcare.gov and HHS, but neither seems to be making much progress in rectifying the situation.  Both have also reached out to their elected officials, according to Heritage.

The Wall Street Journal has published this report that Aides Debated Obama Health-Care Coverage Promise, revealing that some questioned whether the promise was one that could actually be kept. But apparently, it was important that the President's message not be cluttered. Pesky details. As President Barack Obama...

They own all of our Obamacare problems, completely. CNN reports, Senate Democrats supported rule that led to insurance cancellations:

Senate Democrats voted unanimously three years ago to support the Obamacare rule that is largely responsible for some of the health insurance cancellation letters that are going out. In September 2010, Senate Republicans brought a resolution to the floor to block implementation of the grandfather rule, warning that it would result in canceled policies and violate President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their insurance if they liked it. “The District of Columbia is an island surrounded by reality. Only in the District of Columbia could you get away with telling the people if you like what you have you can keep it, and then pass regulations six months later that do just the opposite and figure that people are going to ignore it. But common sense is eventually going to prevail in this town and common sense is going to have to prevail on this piece of legislation as well,” Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said at the time. “The administration's own regulations prove this is not the case. Under the grandfathering regulation, according to the White House's own economic impact analysis, as many as 69 percent of businesses will lose their grandfathered status by 2013 and be forced to buy government-approved plans,” the Iowa Republican said. On a party line vote, Democrats killed the resolution, which could come back to haunt vulnerable Democrats up for re-election this year.

These vulnerable Senate Dems who are up for reelection in 2014 helped kill the grandfathering fix: Mary Landrieu, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan and Mark Begich.