Great news: 2.6 million Healthcare.gov sign-ups still have unresolved problems

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Ed Morrissey:

In case anyone wonders, that comes to about a third of all the enrollments claimed by the White House in the initial open-enrollment period for ObamaCare. Three months later, significant data discrepancies exist, so much so that these consumers may not have health-insurance coverage at all, according to the HHS Inspector General:

The Obama administration has been struggling to clear up data discrepancies that could potentially jeopardize coverage for millions under the health overhaul, the government’s health care fraud watchdog reported Tuesday.

The Health and Human Services inspector general said the administration was not able to resolve 2.6 million so-called “inconsistencies” out of a total of 2.9 million such problems in the federal insurance exchange from October through December 2013.

It’s a slow process for resolution, too:

Of the roughly 330,000 cases that could be straightened out, the administration had only actually resolved about 10,000 during the period of the inspector general’s audit. That worked out to less than 1 percent of the total.

What exactly are those data “inconsistencies”? Pretty much what everyone expected:

Most of the issues dealt with citizenship and income information supplied by consumers that conflicted with what the federal government has on record, the report said.

And that’s going to be a big problem. The income information determines the subsidy assistance that goes to the insurer. Critics warned that putting the exchange on line without connection to the IRS for income verification would lead to fraud as well as misinterpretations and erroneous assignments of subsidies. If HHS has to start clawing back subsidies, consumers may find themselves with a big bill — and lose insurance if they can’t pay it.

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Just like at the VA all of the UNION paper-pushers don’t work very hard on their jobs.
Thus a huge backlog exists and will grow.
There is a small potential silver lining.
Remember Obama’s 20-some unilateral changes to ObamaCare?
This is about one of them.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0701-turley-obamacare-subsidy-halbig-20140701-story.html
Get ready for an even bigger threat to Obamacare

Halbig vs. Burwell challenges the massive federal subsidies in the form of tax credits made available to people with financial need who enroll in the program.
In crafting the act, Congress created incentives for states to set up health insurance exchanges and disincentives for them to opt out.
The law, for example, made the subsidies available only to those enrolled in insurance plans through exchanges “established by the state.”

34 states opted not to establish their own exchanges.

The Halbig plaintiffs — individuals and small businesses in six states that didn’t establish state exchanges — objected that, without the tax credits, they could have claimed exemption from the individual mandate penalty because they would be deemed unable to pay for the coverage. If the courts agree with them, the costs would go up in all 34 states that didn’t establish state exchanges, and the resulting exemptions could lead to a mass exodus from Obamacare.

The D.C. Circuit Court is expected to rule any day now on the Halbig case, and supporters of the Affordable Care Act are growing nervous.
If the ruling goes against the White House, it’s hard to overstate the impact. Without subsidies, consumers in 34 states would face huge additional costs and, because of those costs, potential exemptions from the law.
A ruling against the administration would mean that Obama has been responsible for ordering what could amount to billions of dollars to be paid from the federal Treasury without authority.

Lots more at the link.

Wait a minute. Just today Greggie said:

I’m guessing that if the right manages to deep six Obamacare, it will create so much confusion in the health care system and the consumer marketplace that widespread support for a national single payer program will soon follow. They’re determined to break something that’s beginning to work, but they’ve really given very little thought to what to replace it with.

You mean to tell me that there are still massive problems with Obamacare? Would Greggie lie?

@retire05:

Would Greggie lie?

What?!!!! Why?!!!

@retire05: Yeah, what about the mass confusion of 3-4 million people showing up at the doctors and being told they don’t have insurance. The government has already told doctors to treat them anyway and “we’ll work it out”. There’s some chaos for you.

This administration, to bolster lagging numbers of signups, offered up the scenario where you just said what sounded good on your application and the government would just accept it. Now that the bragging on the numbers is no longer helping popularity polls, the “facts” are being checked out and, what do you know, people lied their asses off because they figured no one was looking.

It takes a real idiot to think this kind of governance is helpful.

We left a great doctor in Lakewood, CA but he was going to retire this year anyway.
We got what seemed like another terrific doctor in Utah but, just this month he told us he is leaving medicine for something medical-related.
We partly chose him because he was only 44 years old, too.
One thing our old Utah doctor said was he didn’t trust the government to pay him for all the freebies he was being asked to handle.
So, we are in the process of finding another new doctor.

And remember you can keep your health insurance and/or doctor period!! No matter what the great liar greggie says!!

@Bill:

It takes a real idiot to think this kind of governance is helpful.

How many voted to re-elect the one in the WH?

@another vet: How many where told 0-blama was Santa Claus vs the Truth!!

@Common Sense: He was Santa Claus to a lot of people. That and the love of Marxism by some is what got him re-elected. I can’t even hold a conversation with those who still support him, at least not on politics etc. Their “facts” are easily proven garbage as has been seen here time and again. They are essentially calling you stupid when they try to “set you straight”.

@another vet: Your so right on dude!! Coming to you from a Vet who has just retired from 47 years in the work force. I wanted to give something back to my fellow Vets so I worked the VA my last year. What a mess and believe me the mess is in all VA’s!! Thanks for your service!! Liberal wachos will not prove any their statements, see Greggies posts!! All they can do is Blame Bush, Republicans, Tea Party Patriots, or the Koch Brothers. And that’s just for starters!!

@Common Sense: Glad to see that you helped support those whose were bought and paid for by the left to sit around and collect welfare. Their votes count too you know! : )

The VA is a huge mess. I’ve related some of my stories here before. Thanks to Obamacare they are now my only healthcare provider so if you never hear back from, assume that I was another one of their hidden statistics.

The left (I try to stay away from ‘liberal’ because to me there is a difference) are hopeless. More and more people I know say that they won’t even bother discussing anything with them anymore because they are too far gone. They aren’t worth the aggravation. I refrain from reading their posts now but still get the gist of what they are saying from reading the responses. Ignorant as always. When an adult has to have something explained to him by two different people four or five times and it still doesn’t sink in, especially when a 10 year old could grasp it, then there is something seriously wrong.

What I want to know is if Obama will simply rule that we accept this as it is and move on?

They lied about what obamacare would mean economically and for medical access.

They couldn’t get the healthcare.gov website up and running on time due to glitches.

They couldn’t/wouldn’t provide numbers on who actually enrolled and PAID the premiums – to actually have health insurance coverage — and magically claimed to have 8 million on the day they set a goal of 7 million sign-ups as the mark of success — despite having barely three million 2 weeks prior to the final date.

Now we have this report:

http://nypost.com/2014/07/02/85-percent-of-obamacare-inconsistencies-cant-be-fixed/

WASHINGTON — Federal officials can’t resolve 85 percent of 2.9 million “inconsistencies” on applications for ObamaCare even after nine months of trying, according to new data provided by the administration.

Most of the problems involve certifying citizenship and income, key components of the national health plan.

Because we all know how Obama promised voters that (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) “Illegal Aliens will not be covered under obamacare!”

One unidentified state-run marketplace cited situations in which infants and young children were “erroneously identified as incarcerated, according to federal data,” the inspector general for the Health and Human Services Department revealed Tuesday.

Just 425,000 problematic applications have been resolved out of 2.9 million that states and the federal exchange reported, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told The Post.

Yeah—these are certainly the people we want in charge of making health care decisions, of maintaining our electronic medical records – you know, the same people who while under investigation and required to maintain all computer records somehow managed to have extremely convenient computer hard drive crashes AND discontinue a file storage contract 10 days after being notified of the pending investigation.

The same kind of bureaucrats who made damn sure they got their performance bonuses at the VA….while causing untold numbers of deaths in their cover up of actions delaying medical care to veterans….yeah…these are the worthless scumbags we want to control the medical system in this country….because to the leftist it is more important for everyone (not including the political overlords, of course) to have equality of misery, rather than allowing a free society where at least some people can through hard work and effort afford to purchase things they feel are important to make their lives better.

And in New York, regarding the epic fail of the obamacare exchange – we get even more wonderful news about premium hikes the left was all worked up over BEFORE cramming obamacare down our throats….now, not so much it seems….

http://nypost.com/2014/07/03/insurers-seeking-double-digit-increase-in-obamacare-premiums-in-ny/

Insurance firms participating in New York’s ObamaCare health exchange are seeking double-digit hikes for patient medical premiums in 2015, new figures reviewed by The Post reveal.

The average hike sought by insurers for individual plans is 12 percent—but a number of firms serving large numbers of patients want to boost individual premiums by nearly 20 percent.

Leading the charge is Excellus Health Plan, which is seeking to sock more than 24,000 customers with a 19.7 percent hike.

The even larger MVP Health Plan, with nearly 33,000 customers, is seeking a 19 percent boost.

While a number of smaller plans put in for lesser increases or, in a number of cases, decreases, Health Republic Insurance of New York — the largest on the exchange with more than 68,000 members — requested a 15.2 percent increase for individual plans.

The proposed rate increases call into question one of the goals of the Affordable Care Act — curbing runaway health-care costs.

In some letters to customers, insurers cited requirements in ObamaCare as contributing to the proposed rate increases.

“Our goal in pricing is to match expected medical spending — including medical costs, utilization and mandated coverage — with premiums. Other factors include plan design and new taxes and fees,” said Maria Gordon Shydlo, a spokeswoman at UnitedHealthCare.

Imagine….ALL the things those of us who actually work in medicine said would occur under obamacare’s socialist methodology is coming to fruition. But wait! Cue the government bureaucrats – who have created the problem in the first place with the unread “you must pass it to see what is in it” collectivist vote buying scam – pretending (yet again) to care about the welfare of the people:

“We are going to scrutinize these rate requests very closely in order to protect New Yorkers and ensure they are not subject to any unjustified rate increases,” said DFS Superintendent Ben Lawsky.

So once the bureaucrat with absolutely no medical experience – or likely any business experience either – rejects the requested rate increases, wait for the inevitable chorus of morons from the left to start shrieking: “See! Private insurance doesn’t work! The ONLY solution is the complete governmental takeover and control of medical care in the US!”

The predictibility of the left would be laughable were it not destroying the best medical system in the world and causing harm to patients while pretending to actually care about them.