I asked my wife yesterday evening, “If I had lied as much as Obama has these last five years, told lies as big as he’s told these last five years, repeated them as often as he has these last five years, how long would you have stayed married to me?”
She answered, “It would depend on how much I was willing to deceive myself for the sake of status.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius—she of the previous party engagement excuse for declining to testify last week about Obamacare’s rollout failure—now is suggesting, with an absolutely straight face (say what you will about the lady; she’s a consummate actress), that Republicans, with their efforts to interfere with the infliction of Obamacare, contributed to Healthcare.gov’s failed rollout.
That’s because, you see, it was Republicans who were overseeing the writing and testing of all that bad code—both on the front end, where we can’t get in easily, and on the back end that manages data transfer to the insurers, claim processing and payment, and so on.
In an ideal world, there would have been a lot more testing, but we did not have the luxury of that. And the law said the go-time was Oct. 1. And frankly, a political atmosphere where the majority party, at least in the House, was determined to stop this anyway they possibly could…was not an ideal atmosphere.
[Emphasis added.] Here’s her confession that her choices were politically made. Aside from her decision to press with “the law said 1 Oct,” she had three years of development and testing available to her. Her decision to dispense with adequate testing, and her decision to hew to a date on a calendar for rollout were purely political ones.
Evil Republicans. Shiny. Shut up.
Kate Rogers, of Fox Business, had some thoughts.
Delaying the sign-up deadline would give the government more time to work out the kinks on healthcare.gov and allow users to become more familiar with the site and find the best plan that fits their needs, experts say.
But would it give sufficient time for the rest of the problems with implementation data reporting to insurers, payments for claims, etc to be worked out? Time to work out the “kinks” in the law itself?
On the don’t delay side, she has this:
“As an economist, I can assume that the people with the most expensive health-care needs: the oldest and sickest, would be spending thousands out of pocket on health care and are the ones with the most demand for the product,” [Devon Herrick, National Center for Policy Analysis Senior Analyst] says. “Younger people, if they get a break or are told they can wait three months, they may do that. You can’t run a risk pool with the sickest people jumping in on day one, and the healthiest on day 90.”
Why would the healthiest jump in at all, though? This is a bad bet for them. Further, under what moral system can a government compel them to jump in?
In the end, the Individual Mandate needs to be delayed, if only to balance the Employer Mandate delay—but both of those need to be delayed only as stepping stones to getting rid of Obamacare and replacing it with a proper, market- and patient/doctor-oriented reform.
President Barack Obama had this to say, through his Press Secretary Jay Carney, about the Obama lie that “if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance. Period.”
Insurers pulled those plans away from them. The law [Obamacare] could not order insurers not to cancel that plan.
His…spokeswoman…Valerie Jarrett had much the same thing to say.
Never mind that those plans no longer were legal under Obamacare and that Obama knew it.
“I’m just hanging on to the tail. The cat’s doing the pulling.”
Sequester—that invention of President Barack Obama, with which he intended to extort Republicans and Conservatives into acceding to his taxing, spending, and borrowing economic policy—is starting to cause trouble for Obamacare, now. The sequester is blocking a set of subsidies that were supposed to help pay deductibles and co-pays under Obamacare.
Amy Payne, writing for The Foundry, quoted Chris Jacobs in The Wall Street Journal on impacts:
There are two possible outcomes. The first is that individuals who have managed to enroll in subsidized health insurance will find they’ve been misled about their copays and deductibles. Families who currently think their plan will charge a $20 copayment for doctor visits may instead face a $25 charge when the sequester kicks in. Individuals who now believe they face maximum out-of-pocket costs of $2,000 may end up paying hundreds more.
Wonderful performance by a President who’s a better policy wonk than his policy staff.