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from the same-thing-over-and-over-again-and-expexting-different-results dept.
GungnirSniper writes:
"CGI Group, the Montreal-based IT consulting company behind the botched rollout of the Federal Healthcare.gov site, has been removed from the Massachusetts Health Connector project. This comes about two months after being removed from Healthcare.gov, and a few weeks after CGI admitted the MA site 'may not be fully functioning by the end of June, and that one option under consideration is to scrap the multi-million-dollar site and start over.'
Like Oregon's similar troubles, Massachusetts uses paper submissions as a workaround to meet Federal sign-up requirements. 'The paper backlog fell to 21,000 pending applications, from 54,000 two weeks ago.'
If you are in the US, have you used Healthcare.gov or a State equivalent? If you are not in the US, do you use similar online systems in your nation?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by spxero on Tuesday March 18 2014, @09:18AM
The problem I've had with it is the pricing. To cover myself and my family would cost me roughly 4x what it does through my employer for significantly less coverage. I haven't been following it as closely as I should, but from what I've read on the failures is that for people like myself with a wife and a couple kids it's too expensive and they're just getting health care through their employer. The "successes" I read follow how so-and-so is able to get health care at a huge discount because they have some sort of disability or life predicament. So where is the subsidy coming from? It's not coming from my health care plan, because I've chosen to stick with my MUCH better employer plan. How is this a sustainable model?
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday March 18 2014, @10:57AM
It doesn't have to be a subsidy. Could just be less of a ripoff. Employers can usually negotiate cheaper rates too.
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(Score: 1) by tomp on Tuesday March 18 2014, @10:58AM
Why would you look to a government program for insurance when you have an employer that provides it for you? What's next, bashing unemployment benefits because they don't offer the same pay as a good job?
You have an employer that provides good health benefits. That's great. Unfortunately, not every one has that.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday March 18 2014, @11:50AM
I'm not sure that's what they were getting at. My understanding was their employer decided to drop the insurance the employer were previously providing for their employees.
The way it was described leads me to believe the employer is doing this on purpose though to seed some hate for the ACA. It seems like the employer's dropping their employees insurance at a time that's going to force their employees to rush around in extra confusion and cause unwarranted stress for both the employees and add to an already overburdened system.
Who do you think will get blamed for the additional headache this is going to cause the employees? Maybe my tinfoil's on too tight, but it seems to me people are going to blame the healthcare exchange, the ACA and Obama and this will be held up by the GOP as a shining example of how the ACA has failed people rather than people wondering why the heck did the employer wait till the last minute to drop their company insurance plan. Kind of like the lady that lost her "not worth the paper it was printed on" insurance because it didn't meet the basic requirements, then turned around and blamed the ACA that she had no insurance and refuses to look for another plan, which I stumbled on to with StumbleUpon here [addictinginfo.org]
Seems a little skulduggery to me.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 3) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday March 18 2014, @02:42PM
I'm realizing I responded to the wrong post, this was suppose to be in response to this [dev.soylentnews.org]
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1) by spxero on Tuesday March 18 2014, @11:55AM
You're right- not everyone does. But the cost doesn't seem to line up with the benefit. My employer isn't paying that much more than I am for my coverage (I pay roughly $350/mo), but to get this coverage through the ACA would cost me somewhere around $2k/mo. Unless forced to, I don't see too many people signing up at $2k/mo to help subsidize the people only paying $100/mo.
As an aside, a few years back I lived in a state where I was terminated and unable to get unemployment benefits because the Workforce Commission liked the employer's story of why I was terminated better than mine.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by velex on Tuesday March 18 2014, @11:08AM
This is similar to my experience as well. I don't think sustainability is what congress was looking for. It's clear this is little more than a golden handout to insurance companies, and it's unclear that this handout is even coming from tax money.
Instead of this ACA mess, simply divorcing health insurance from employment would have done a lot more good. Why can't I just get the rates that are offered to my employer? Why can't I pay for a plan of my own choosing with before-tax money? Why are companies being forced to limit employees they don't want to offer insurance to 29.5 hours? When that finally hits, working two jobs will become the norm! Insanity!
Personally, the right wing lost me when they started talking about free Obamacare sex changes. Do they even know what "Obamacare" is--the whole thing that "Obamacare" means paying a private company? Do they even understand that "Obamacare" doesn't provide anybody anything for free except perhaps superseding some things like county health plans and perhaps moving around where the money comes from when somebody without insurance goes to the ER?
The left wing are no heroes for moving forward with the ACA after it became apparent that the right wouldn't let anything that wasn't a disaster through, but I'm not sure the right wing even knows what they're talking about.
These failures to roll out online exchanges are something else, but it all comes down to the same thing. It's government pork for big corporations at the expense of the economy and the middle class. No problems have been solved by the ACA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @02:05PM
The health care exchanges are not intended for use by people who already have good insurance trhough a group policy (such as your employer). The exchange is for private insurance. if you don't have a job, or your employer doesn't offer insurance (many don't), then it is the best way.