The editors of the LA Times make a somewhat overwrought plea to postpone the individual mandate:
Not long after she uttered that infamous phrase, Pelosi got her way. She stampeded House Democrats to vote for a massive, complex Obamacare plan that few lawmakers in either party had time to understand. She and Democratic Senate leaders ramrodded Obamacare without a single Republican vote.
Democratic lawmakers voted for a bill without a clear idea of how well it would work.
Now they know.
Obamacare is faltering under its own bureaucratic weight. Massive computer problems are preventing people from signing up for coverage in the new online marketplaces. Worse, many people who finally manage to log in suffer sticker shock at high insurance premium or deductible prices.
[…]
Congress can start to fix this mess by delaying the mandate that everyone have insurance or pay a penalty. As it is now, people must sign up for insurance by March 31 to avoid penalties.
The feds already have granted a one-year reprieve on the companion mandate that employers provide insurance or pay fines. The administration has allowed any number of carve-outs for other special pleaders.
A delay in the individual mandate isn’t a special break. It’s simple fairness.
In the rush to pass Obamacare, Democratic leaders reassured lawmakers that Americans would love it, once they understood it.
Uwe Reinhardt gives Obamacare an “F” on the midterm:
Woe to the members of the management team in a corporation if problems with a project are hidden from the chief executive when they become known, exposing the chief executive to embarrassing public relations surprises. Heads would roll. The board, however, would assign the blame for such problems not primarily to the management team and instead to the chief executive himself or herself. He hired and supervised the team.
From that perspective, the blame for the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov goes to its entire management team, to be sure, but primarily to the chief executive on top of that project. In my view, not only the proverbial buck stops on the chief executive’s desk, but, for the management of this particular project, the grade of F goes there as well.
It is worth reminding readers, however, that grades on midterm papers or tests do not constitute the overall grade in a course. Students receiving an F on a midterm paper or test often end up with a respectable overall course grade, spurred on in part by that very failure.
Similarly, with enormous effort and, one hopes, constant future supervision by the chief executive, there is hope that the technical problems encountered so far can be fixed in time, with the celebrated A-team of software experts now on the scene.
As I’ve said before, I think these assessments are grossly premature. All they’re rating is the user experience. That’s only the tip of the PPACA iceberg. Beyond the user experience there’s the inner workings—the accuracy of the information presented, data exchange with insurance companies, and so on. The user experience could behave flawlessly but if the guts of the system remain broken the system itself will remain broken.
In the final analysis we won’t really know whether the PPACA is working unless more people have healthcare insurance after it’s fully implemented than did before and it’s actuarially sound. That won’t be for years.
The current hoopla involves initial problems of signing-on, giving info etc. These are now being defined as front-end functions, which most say will be relatively easy to fix. However, back-end transmissions are not taken into consideration, and these deal with subsidy approvals, dialoguing with insurance companies, checking the authenticity of the information given, and integrating it into the whole system for final processing. To date, though, no one knows how well these additional steps will work in order to achieve end-stage verification of having a health care policy.
In the meantime, the many federally hired navigators were not subjected to background checks, unlike temporary census helpers had to go through. Neither were the last minute 10,000 people employed to man the call centers, required to have background checks — even though all these government hires are privy to the most sensitive of personal information. Additionally, there are copy-cat web sites popping up on google searches that mimic and can reroute people trying to go to the government healthcare website. These phony sites ask for the same data, and can consequently access important information just because of the errors and confusion this signing-up process presents to people.
I’m just wondering, why couldn’t the 15% that was originally cited as not having health insurance, been more simply and directly addressed — vouchers, subsidies, health care pools — instead of having everyone thrown into this health care upheaval?
Another aside to the topic at hand:
I know that Benghazi has become an uncomfortable and put-aside event of 2012. However, I want to let people know that 60 Minutes is going to have a segment on it, this Sunday, from an on-the-ground perspective. A trailer I just saw, talked about the State Department disallowing security guards to have any weapons. IOW, when the attack happened there was no defense. I continue to think of this entire episode as a cover-up to the current administration’s incompetence and inexperience, whereby people lost their lives, while the press remained disinterested and disengaged, as if this had never happened.
This blogger has to be reminded that the goal of Obamacare is that everyone have the opportunity to obtain good and cost-effective health care. The goal is NOT that everyone have insurance.
Insurance is not health care. It is, in fact, antagonistic to health care, offering, as it does, no more than 80 cents on the premium dollar.
Indeed, many insured have been denied health care and have had to declare bankruptcy. Others have had good health care and not been insured, such as those who take advantage of medical tourism in Thailand, Mexico, Prague, Budapest and Costa Rica, where good health care can be had at a fraction of what the Amerikan medical conspiracy charges, some times less than the deductible a person needs to pay.
Then there are those who are fully insured who die without availability of health care while traveling in foreign lands. If you climb Everest, Obamacare will force you to pay premium or penalty while offering you NOTHING.
“Obamacare” is about politics, money, and power. As such, the policy is of little concern. How many people are able to get better healthcare is not the goal. Delaying the individual mandate is a political problem, and the decision will be based upon politics not policy.
While delaying the individual mandate may be fair, it is a disastrous politically, and it may cause “Obamacare” to collapse. Hurting a few or many people is acceptable. These are people whose votes do not matter.
@Jimbino
Your analysis does a very good job of why insurance will fail, but if the goal of “Obamacare” were about healthcare, it would not be about insurance. For the clueless: If you cannot afford health insurance, you cannot the deductible.
If it were about politics, money, and power, it would be about insurance.
Delaying the individual mandate is a political problem, and the decision will be based upon politics not policy.
Tasty,
I was wondering why a delay in the individual mandate would pose such a problem. Today, one pundit gave a reasonable answer, in that insurance pricing is based on the immediate start date, and might be different (higher) a year from now, which would then alter the fabulous claims of premium reductions, which have been such a magical, albeit deceptive, selling point of the PPACA.
However, an opinion piece, read just this morning, outlines a few generalized alternative free market ideas regarding a non-centralized approach to HC reform.
These excerpted suggestions are within the context of this writer’s belief that our country is undergoing a transition period (versus the notion of declining), away from the 20th century social progressive entitlements and policies, which only contain promises of growing, rather than diminishing funding liabilities in the near future.
As a side note, the implementation guts of the PPACA, is not only politically fueled, but also has plenty of cronyism attached to it — something that has become a hallmark of this administration. For instance, the firm, CGI Federal Inc., given the $2 billion dollar contract to oversee the roll-out has one high-up employee who is a Princeton classmate of the FLOTUS. Also Valerie Jarrett’s daughter and her husband are employed by this firm.
Coincidence?
@jan
You are still trying to understand it as a policy issue. It is not.
The Democrats cannot allow the delay because that would mean the Republicans were right. All political advantage from the government shut down would switch to the Republicans. If the thing can be delayed once, it can be delayed many times, and it can be dismantled.
If you were concerned about healthcare for poor people, you would not get them insurance. Using insurance allows money and power gains through control and access.
A $4,000 deductible cannot be met by poor people, but it does limit the impact on the healthcare system. The poor get screwed, but that is no surprise.
More of the PPACA reality seeping out: L.A. Times: Middle-Class Americans Feeling Surprised/Dismayed By the Higher Obamacare Costs.
Tasty,
I guess my head just doesn’t wrap itself well around political end games that are now being played out. This winners/losers aspect that is favored by both parties — but especially by the dems — will eventually make it’s way around the pike, biting all in the butt — and then everyone will be a loser.