It is time to start considering the worst case scenario for Obamacare.
It is time to start considering the worst case scenario for Obamacare,
that the exchanges continue to malfunction, that plan cancellations go into effect, that insurers see the political winds shifting and stop playing nice with the administration, and that significant numbers of people are left stranded without coverage as a result. Rather than reforming the individual market, which was flawed but did work for some people, Obamacare will have destroyed it and left only dysfunction and chaos in its wake.
The article looks hard at the situation, and sees nothing but disaster. The policies that have been cancelled cannot be reinstated easily, if at all. The people whose policies have been cancelled cannot enroll in a new plan because of the failure of the Obamacare website. The result: Come January large numbers of Americans who once had catastrophic health insurance — to protect themselves against a sudden health emergency — will no longer have that insurance and will be exposed.
The Democrats wanted this, they created this, they demanded this, and now they have given us this. And in a sane world there would be no doubt that come November they would be fired for this. Sadly, I have doubts it is a sane world.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
It is time to start considering the worst case scenario for Obamacare,
that the exchanges continue to malfunction, that plan cancellations go into effect, that insurers see the political winds shifting and stop playing nice with the administration, and that significant numbers of people are left stranded without coverage as a result. Rather than reforming the individual market, which was flawed but did work for some people, Obamacare will have destroyed it and left only dysfunction and chaos in its wake.
The article looks hard at the situation, and sees nothing but disaster. The policies that have been cancelled cannot be reinstated easily, if at all. The people whose policies have been cancelled cannot enroll in a new plan because of the failure of the Obamacare website. The result: Come January large numbers of Americans who once had catastrophic health insurance — to protect themselves against a sudden health emergency — will no longer have that insurance and will be exposed.
The Democrats wanted this, they created this, they demanded this, and now they have given us this. And in a sane world there would be no doubt that come November they would be fired for this. Sadly, I have doubts it is a sane world.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
The Cloward and Piven theory has been applied to 1/7th of the US economy. You simply crowd-out the private health insurance industry, create chaos through a useless website and then become the governmental knight-in-shining-armor to provide single payer, universal, socialized medicine for all. In the progress, you have the I.R.S. become the thug agency that enforces your healthcare and you have felonious navigators as your ombudsmen.
Ultimately…Americans’ entire lives, from cradle to grave, will be under the control of statists.
In the end, the constitution will “necessarily” be shredded and individual liberty will be redefined. It will depend on what the meaning of liberty is from executive order to executive order.
But what difference, at that point, will it make….as long as the typical American voter is fed a constant diet of Miley Cyrus antics, the latest professional athlete’s antics and the newest Obama phone…. just let them eat broccoli.
IN WASHINGTON STATE 80% OF THOSE WHO DO SIGN UP ,
ARE GETTING THE MEDICARE OR MEDICAID OPTION AND ARE PAYING NOTHING INTO TO THE SYSTEM. THE REST ARE STAYING OUT BECAUSE OF THE EXHORBITANT COSTS…THE PERFECT STORM !
In 1998 I was getting private hospitalization insurance in washington. It cost $40/month($55 for over 65’s), with $500 deductable, with 20% copay up to $2000 total maximum!!! I kid you not. Affordable and sane.
Then the lib/dems in washinton state invoked obamacare lite(~1998 health care “reforms”) which restricted and mandated the washington private policies, in ways you would expect lib/dem fools to do. The health care private insurers warned that this would cause prices to skyrocket. And so it came to pass within a few years.
Don’t let them tell you that private healthcare was not affordable!
The lib/dems could simply not “stand” that it was not free for the parisites, thats all…but they were not willing to simply provide “free care” with general funds…it would cost alot. So they forced the burden on others(as lib/dem authoritarian despots always do), and destroyed an affordable private system in the process.
Even vouchers for the “poor” using that private system would have cost far less than what we are about to get.
Thus endeth the lesson.
People only have to go through an exchange if they want a subsidy. Talking to a broker is still an option.
The administration is praying that the website is up and running by the elections.
If its not working up to full speed its a failure that all democrats will pay for. And as soon as the republicans have super majorities in both houses Obama care is gone.
Oh it WILL be replaced by something the republicans come up with but that will be NOTHING close to Obama. It might be more than many people like but it will offer the chance to cover the poor and those with pre existing conditions. They will just be covered by an expanded Medicaid/medicare.
Get used to this idea now because it will happen.
Just hope that Obama care gets repealed.
Thank you for stopping with the CAPITALIZATION of everything. It is really appreciated.
The government can ride to the rescue only if the public has faith in it to do the job. This is an instance of such complete government directed (intentional or not) failure that a government based replacement for this goat fornication is not plausible. The failure is obvious and is connected to the party that loves government.
I say thanks as well. Caps are an assault on the senses and work against whatever point you are trying to get across. The alternative many caps lovers fallback on, sporadically capitalizing words for effect, are also poor means of effective communication. Just like exclamation points, caps should be rare. Like, endangered species rare.
There are a number of tools to emphasize text, like italics and bolding, that are less intrusive and can pack some tremendous impact if used appropriately but they should also be used sparingly. Use of white space between paragraphs also helps people read comments easier.
As a Washingtonian, I have also been going through the same things as yourself. Our insurance rates have been high for a long time and even with Obamacare, minimal coverage is extremely expensive. Washington probably wont see the rate shock other states see because we have had high prices for some time now. I could be leasing a BMW for what I spend on premiums. A car I would drive everyday as opposed to medical care that I use infrequently and unless I have a major problem like cancer, could easily pay for out of pocket if I didn’t spend all that money on premiums.
” the worst case scenario for Obamacare,”
We’ve already seen the worst case scenario: the bill signed into law.
True, but in many areas the number of plans that brokers can offer has been reduced due to the plans having been rendered “non-compliant” by the ACA.
I was programming code that requires capitalization.
I simply didn’t shift back when I wrote it .
I didn’t know it was important.
I was not trying to make a statement by capitalizing.
I will happily make sure not to capitalize in the future.
I thought my comments might be worth commentary,
not my font.
I appreciate your site.
Your comments are definitely appreciated. Keep it up!
The average person simply can’t afford Obamacare. Subsedized premiums for some won’t offset greater overall costs. This will result in people reducing discretionary spending. Restaurants and carr dealers will feel the effect first, closely followed by other businesses. Unemployment will rise and tax revenue will plummet. State and local governments will slash their workforce. Meanwhile an expanding federal workforce will sqander ever more resources through bloat and inefficiency. The economy will spiral in upon itself amid cries for more federal intervention. Industries will be effectively nationalized and micromanaged by federally appointed czars. Unable to sell more bonds, the federal government will impose confiscatory taxes on the wealthy (and the upper middle class). At this point, it will no longer be a severe recession, but a depression. Atlas Shrugged will no longer be thought of as fiction, but prophecy.
Make no mistake, as I have stated on this site before, we are involved not in a political debate but a civil war. This president and his administration never wanted this Web site and healthcare program to work — they wanted it to fail, just as Jwing explained above, so they could finally destroy the private insurance industry — many members of which, by the way, are non-profit entities, and all members of which are and have been regulated by state insurance commissions. It seems so simple, the term “single payer.” But what it really means is labyrinthine, unaccountable bureaucracy and a system so inflexible it will asphyxiate quality healthcare in this country — except for the members and allies of the ruling political class. It is time to sweep these people from office.
1. Never assign malice when simple stupidity will do. I don’t really think the people in the Obama administration are as smart or devious as you think. I think most of them are naive, ignorant, and plain stupid. They thought Obamacare would really work. In fact, their biggest problem is that they think they are educated, when they are not.
2. I hate the term “single-payer.” It was invented by the left to disguise the fact that this proposal is actually a plan to nationalize the health care industry, turn it from a private business to a government-run operation. Better to call it what it is, nationalization.
Sadly as bad as what we’re seeing is, as bad as the worst case scenarios listed are, it will get much worse.
The entire medical industry has been thrown into chaos. if you can pay out of pocket – you’ll probably be Ok if you can find a doctor (many are moving to a 2 tier structure with big discounts and preferential treatment for cash patients). Medicare/caid could get striped of more funds to prop up Obama care. Your already seeing the interviews with the cancer patients who’ve lost their insurance and will just “have to let nature take its course”. Estimates are that as much as 100 million people, 1/3rd of the nation, could lose insurance. The insurance companies can’t undo everything even is given a green light in less then maybe a few months, and it would take Washington months even to come together and force a wholesale gutting of obamacare necessary to allow it (and ram it past Obamas cold dead hands).
The Dems are starting to grasp what they shackled themselves to. They really thought this would be like a super medicare program. Lots would get tax funded benefits and like it, gov would get credit, and the party of big gov would get the credit for a big all encompassing healthcare solution. Republicans would get skewered for their fight against it.
They never thought Obama would have bungled any of it – it was his dream, his legacy. They beleave gov is better, more capable. They beleaved Obama would do it. ..liked they beleaved he could save them from the public backlash the last 2 election cycles.
Now they are starting to realize the web site didn’t just have “a” embarrassing bug – it was completely and systematically bungled. Experts are talking about perhaps months to several months to develop it to the degree it would be safe to use, much less fully functional.
The flaws rae “unlimited risks” of data lose to criminals.
Worse, the program is only getting interest from the worst case uninsured that could drive the costs up Trillions over the next few years.
The insurence agencyies adn medical groups who agreed to participate are bailing in fear of it.
…and the press is turning on them. Seems reporters, especially big name editors and commentators often had their health insurance through independent sources. So their policies are canceled, and they are finding the huge sticker shock, and seeing all the explanations from J. Carny are complete bs. And given many of then spent the last few years defending Obamacare, they are furious!!
And that’s still not how bad its going to get. Your looking at months, maybe a year of stories of how incompetent this all was done, more and more stories about experts warnings ignored and suppressed. With it more adn more stories of elderly going without treatment, women and babies dying without proper care. Its 1/6th the countries economy, so almost everyone knows people who are sick, who work in healthcare. Will see doctors going out of business, nurses and other medical workers laid off as no one could pay them. Hospital chains going out of business and closing their doors.
Whats the impact of that on the economy? Whats the unemployment number spike from Obamacare going to be? Folks are already hearing of folks being forced from working full time to part time by companies trying to keep clear of Obamacare rules. Folks were refusing to beleave it before, but if this drives a major hit to the jobs market?
If folks skiping the low level care they can’t afford, hold out until they are really sick and couldn’t ignore it anymore, have to sell homes cars everything because they waited until it got really bad/expensive.
Could this get kind of great depression level bad with everyone knowing someone who died, lost homes, lost jobs, because of Obamacare?
You could need some EXTEAME emergency systms thrown together, but no ones going to trust the gov to do it.
Oh, adn its al in a election year, after years of Obama pushing confrontational politics. How can a gov thats kept everyone at each others throats for years come together fast to fix it?
I may be in agreement with Robert on his point #1. Although Obama et al. have said that their ultimate goal is “single-payer” (OK, I agree with his point #2, too), I don’t think that most politicians, aides, or administrators thought that Obamacare would be nearly this horrendous when they wrote it, when the Senate passed it, or when President Obama signed it. This is pure incompetence. Except for the corruption that the Senate used in order to get enough votes to pass it, or corruption of the House having only “deemed” the law to have passed.
Were they competent, the administration wouldn’t have messed up the 30-or-so-hour part-time work week, and Congressmen certainly wouldn’t be so afraid for their re-elections next year (as Kelly Starks points out, below — except for the election-year comment; this was all supposed to happen in an off year, and we were supposed to have accepted it by election time — yet another indicator of incompetence).
Malice, however, comes in different forms than Obamacare, such as when the president says that he will reward his friends (corruption) and punish his enemies (malice).
Don’t get me wrong. Obama could still use Obamacare to punish his enemies, and he has clearly given his friends temporary relief from portions of the law, but he has not yet demonstrated malice through this hideous turd (which seems, at this time, to be unflushable). And I have no doubt that he wants eventual complete control over everyone’s healthcare through nationalizing the system, as in England’s or Canada’s turd-like systems.
There is strategy in confusion and chaos.
Hum, bit of a factiod.
To make Obamacare halfway solvent – they need about 7 million folks signed up by the end of march, and they need a high proportion of young healthy folks they can milk to pay the big bills for the elderly and infirm.
To get to 7 million by then the websites would need to enroll 50,000 people a day.
The websites max designed capacity is to process 25,000 a day.
So far only 2,400 a day are being processed. Most of those don’t subscribe to the service, they just look over what the policies would be. Of the subset that do sign up – most rae elderly adn sick that can’t find any other policies. Exactly the high cost folks Obamacare can’t support without a heavy subsedy of young folks willing to pay tyhrough hte nose, but not get sick very often.
I see a couple math problems there?
I think you found a definite design problem. Your analysis suggests that management failed to perform some fundamental engineering functions, such as a preliminary design review.
They did not have to burden themselves with actual logistics, that is plain to see based on their lack of concern with the decision to dump the site on the web and they knew well that it would not work. A complete and total proof of true incompetence.The parasite law has been placed and affixed to the victim and they will get around to getting it to work at some point, they, in their sick logic they have plenty of time. The entrenched law is their weapon.
Lets be hopeful that their misperceptions and arrogance will be their unraveling as the public comes to understand what the public have allowed to come to fruition through their own ignorance and trusting nature.