The sting whereby a bogus science paper was accepted by more than 150 journals has produced one result so far: One journal has ceased publication.
A long and detailed assessment of the present technical problems of the Obamacare exchange website.
It is worth the long read. The author appears to have asked the right questions of a lot of the right people, and appears to have approached the issue honestly. Key quote:
In a couple of ways, then, the severe user-interface problems at the front end of the federal exchange has actually had some advantages from CMS’s point of view, because by keeping enrollment volume low it has kept some other huge problems from becoming instantly uncontrollable.
But that low volume is mostly a very bad thing for Obamacare, of course, since the viability of the exchanges depends on a certain size and demographic mix which cannot be attained unless these problems are resolved very quickly. I couldn’t get enrollment numbers from any of the people I spoke with, but I was told that the uptake model that HHS built (using CBO projections) to predict how the exchanges would work made a low-end estimate that just under half a million people would enroll nationwide by October 31st, and that enrollment would then accelerate dramatically between November 15 and December 30th. The October 31 target, which was thought to be modest, now looks essentially impossible to reach, but their bigger worry is that period in November and December.
If the problems now plaguing the system are not resolved by mid-November and the flow of enrollments at that point looks like it does now, the prospects for the first year of the exchanges will be in very grave jeopardy.
As I said, read the whole thing. Whether you support or oppose Obamacare, this article appears to give an honest appraisal of the present situation, which is not good.
Finding out what’s in it: Bankrupt Detroit has dumped the health insurance of all its retirees, forcing them into Obamacare.
Effective Jan.1, retired city workers under age 65 will no longer receive full coverage from the state and will instead receive a $125 stipend to shop in Michigan’s health-care exchange under the newly-rolled out Affordable Care Act.
The stipend does not come close to paying for the cost of any insurance plan.
These were all government employees in a blue state in a very blue city. Thus, almost all of them were likely Democrats who voted for and strongly supported Obama. Well, they are now finding out what that support has gotten them. For one thing, just because they like their health plan they aren’t getting to keep it.
Want to send your child to school with a lunch you prepared yourself? The federal government now forbids it, unless you get a doctor’s note.
When I was a kid it was assumed your parents would provide you the lunch you liked. Today, every kid is fed by the federal school lunch program. And it appears that this federal program has decided that only it knows what is good for your child.
The Twitter comment of the day: “More people have applied to live on Mars than have signed up for Obamacare.”
I almost never look at Twitter comments, but this one was too good to pass up.
Five stupid movie deaths that should have been really easy to avoid.
These examples are why I find most modern movies either boring, annoying, or stupid. They too often follow the same predictable action formula developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they too often require their main characters to act stupid, and they too often are based on ridiculous concepts that are so silly that even after typing randomly for one million years one million monkeys would find them unworthy.
The uncertainty of science: A recently discovered 1.8 million year old skull suggests that the multiple human species theorized by paleontologists were actually just one. More details here.
It is one of five early human skulls — four of which have jaws — found so far at the site, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the capital Tbilisi, along with stone tools that hint at butchery and the bones of big, saber-toothed cats. Lead researcher David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgian National Museum, described the group as “the richest and most complete collection of indisputable early Homo remains from any one site.”
The skulls vary so much in appearance that under other circumstances, they might have been considered different species, said co-author Christoph Zollikofer of the University of Zurich. “Yet we know that these individuals came from the same location and the same geological time, so they could, in principle, represent a single population of a single species,” he said. The researchers compared the variation in characteristics of the skulls and found that while their jaw, brow and skull shapes were distinct, their traits were all within the range of what could be expected among members of the same species.
I have always thought that paleontologists were too quick to name each new major find as a new species. Among all species there is always a wide variety of features. One person is tall. Another has a big forehead or head. This discovery reinforces this idea. The five skulls were all found in the same place, from the same group. Yet they were very different from each other.
Finding out what’s in it: Some comments from people trying to use the Obamacare website.
Note this important point by the author of the post:
As with our last visit to the HealthCare.gov Facebook page, I’ve tried to avoid all ideological objectors and instead present only comments from people who seem to be genuinely trying to purchase insurance from the website.
As tea party and conservatives noted in 2009, Obamacare was putting the equivalent of the DMV in charge of the health insurance business. It appears that this prediction was right on the money. The comments are horrifying. No private business would dare operate a website this poorly designed.
I repeat: Obamacare was what the government shutdown was all about. The Republicans wanted to revise or repeal it, the Democrats refused to consider any changes at all. Which do you think was the better policy position for the American people?
Working for the Democratic Party: The major news networks blamed the shutdown on Republicans 41 times, Democrats 0 times.
In Congress the shutdown was a team effort, involving both parties. To pin the blame on one party is to reveal your partisanship.
But then, this really isn’t news. The major news networks have been unabashed Democratic Party operatives for years. This detail just provides another one of thousands of illustrations that prove it.
Leftwing tolerance: A Moveon.org petition calls for the arrest of the House Republican leadership.
At the moment the petition has over 21,000 signers. Isn’t it gratifying how tolerant the left is to the idea of dissent, when that dissent happens to disagree with them?
Working for the Democratic Party: A House hearings yesterday, the partisan tactics of the director of the National Park Service were clearly illustrated by comparing what this government official did during the Occupy Wall Street protests versus his actions during the government shutdown. Watch:
The man should be fired. But he won’t be. Obama’s outrage over such activities is pure theater. He actually likes what Jarvis did, as it wholly supports the agenda of the Democratic Party.
Obamacare might well be imploding.
In other words, the elites in Washington might have signed a corrupt budget deal, but meanwhile the cause of the shutdown, Obamacare, continues to show itself to be an abject failure, justifying the efforts of the more honest Republicans to try to stop it.
The Democrats endorsed this law again during the budget standoff. Had they be willing to even consider minor changes the shutdown could have been averted. Instead, they stood firm as a party, supporting this unworkable law, as it stands.
