Latest on the Exchanges
Bob Laszewski interviewed by Ezra Klein:
The insurance industry is literally receiving a handful of new enrollments from the 36 Obama administration-run exchanges. It’s really 20 or 30 or 40 each day through last week. And a good share of those enrollments are problematic. One insurance company told me, “We got an enrollment from John Doe. Then five minutes later we got a message from CMS disenrolling him. Then we got another message re-enrolling him.” On and on, up to 10 times. So insurers aren’t really sure if the enrollments they’ve got are enrollments they should have.
And remember, the insurers have automated all this. They don’t have a clerk sending out a welcome letter and an enrollment card. So if you just let the computer run, it could theoretically issue a welcome letter, a cancellation letter, a welcome letter, a cancellation letter, etc. Now, they’re not doing this right now because it’s all screwed up. They can manage a few dozen per day by hand. But when you’re talking about thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, it becomes completely unmanageable.
When will politicians realize that they didn’t seek a career in the healthcare industry for a reason?
Probably never
It’s too late for that realization.
“…they designed their system they were so paranoid about that that they wanted to make sure people browsing got the lowest price. That required signing in so you could see subsidies. And my theory is that’s why they went to the architecture they did even though the IT systems people wanted to go another way.”
Just a little deception, no big deal…- Losing trust in our government day after day.
Forever and ever
” What do you think went wrong in the design of the federal insurance marketplace.?”
“I think they trusted their subcontractors. There’s an astronaut joke that an astronaut is a guy sitting on top of a rocket assembled by the lowest bidders. Obamacare is a bit like the astronaut on top of the rocket. As I understand it, some of these were no-bid contracts, like CGI.”
Wow, this is so true. They should have allowed the choosing to be much more open.
How can we convince Congress that a private market- with well informed participants- works very well?
I would like to see a system to show where my tax dollars are being spent
Better find a magic genie then
“So I think some of the problem is the Obama administration never brought in heavyweight IT people to oversee this. Are there no Democrats in Silicon Valley?”
hahahahha, this is great. Maybe they picked a Republican company and that’s what went wrong?
That could be a possibility. Just another example of a situation that would not have happened in a private market.
“They’re not seeing anything like the federal problems. I should say that if you’ve seen one state you’ve seen one state. But to generalize, the vast majority of states really did a good job testing.”
Leave it to the states!
Anyone but the federal government, please!
Jeez, can’t a guy change his mind? I tried to enroll, then I changef my mind. Then the wife tolds me I need health insurance, so I enrolled all over again, then I changed my mind when I got the bill. Finally, I just told her I’ll wait until I got sick and then I’d enroll! case settled!