Posted on 10/19/2013 5:09:17 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
THIS is not the column about the Obamacare rollout I expected to write.
If you had told me, months ago, that weeks after the health care law’s coverage expansion went into effect I would be writing about the problems its launch had exposed, I would have assumed I’d be writing about rate shock, rising premiums and the disappearance of many cheap insurance plans.
I may be writing about those issues soon enough. But for now there is a more pressing subject: The online federal health care exchange, the heart of the Obamacare project, is such a rolling catastrophe that it may end up creating a major policy fiasco immediately rather than eventually.
If the fix-it effort moves too slowly, it’s possible to envision a worst-case scenario unfolding. If the Web site doesn’t work soon, even liberals concede that the mandate would have to be delayed, because you can’t very well fine people for failing to buy a product they can’t access. And that combination — a hard-to-navigate online portal and no penalty for staying uninsured — could effectively discourage all but the most desperate customers from shopping, which in turn would create an unsustainably expensive insurance pool, driving prices up and driving people away, and potentially wrecking the entire individual insurance market in short order.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Well said sir!
But, in keeping with the folks in charge, while they are blindingly ignorant, they don’t even know…that they don’t even know.
But at least now Republicans say, “Some of us tried to stop it”
The hard part comes later when they have to manage the massive amounts of data collected on 300 million people without security leaks, fraud, errors, waste, misuse by federal agencies like the IRS, etc. etc etc. etc.
The failure of the Internet systems doesn't bode well for Obamacare. Many examples of why Obamacare is a failure in the years to come.
Yeah...and when the 0 finally decides there is no way this can go on...he’ll singlehandedly call for a delay; he will be off the charts with the I I I I I I I I I . How freaking magnanimous. And the kneepad-clad press will sing his praises for doing so. Then he’ll want another 200 billion or so to redesign the entire system. Predictable.
The problem there is that this bill was designed to collapse the insurance market and force us into single-payer in about a decade......not a couple of years.
This much collapse this fast is far beyond the scope of even those who wrote it and were hoping to destroy the current health insurance structure. I can’t see a point at which the various websites start signing up dramatically larger and increasing numbers of subscribers AND ALSO have a majority of those dramatically larger and increasing subscribers being young people paying $300-400 dollar premiums. The money isn’t there. The websites can’t successfully handle that traffic.
I simply can’t fathom what the insurance markets will look like a year from now after having been forced by law to accept thousands of new high-risk, high cost customers into the system without having had any appreciable increase in money flowing in. Emergency funding bills through Congress? Hell, I don’t know.
I heard that the government is going to start taxing us for not smoking.
Douthat can see that the unsuccessful exchange/marketplace rollout will just accelerate the Obamunists' call for expedited movement into unmitigated socialist systems. As Douthat says --- and I think he's correct --- they're going to do this by expanding the existing Medicare and Medicaid programs: Medicare, by dropping it down to 55's or even further, and Medicaid by ballooning eligibility to higher income levels.
And the so-called conservatives don't even have a plan.
You can't beat something with nothing.
And you can't blame Douthat for that.
The anger and backlash will stick to RATs in 2014.
No, Douthat was writing against Obamacare months, even years ago.
The easiest part of all, the website, is the biggest Epic Fail of the century and we’re supposed to believe they can administer the rest of it? How can they even begin when no one can sign up?
“If the Web site doesn’t work soon, even liberals concede that the mandate would have to be delayed, because you can’t very well fine people for failing to buy a product they can’t access. And that combination — a hard-to-navigate online portal and no penalty for staying uninsured — could effectively discourage all but the most desperate customers from shopping, which in turn would create an unsustainably expensive insurance pool, driving prices up and driving people away, and potentially wrecking the entire individual insurance market in short order.”
It’s going exactly as planed. They never wanted this system. They need this system to fail so they can say “we tried. We need single payer.”
fear not my nutty liberal friend. The system is working, er not working as planned.
Yes, the process of collapsing the insurance market will take so much money out of the economy that we will reminisce about the good old days of the 2008 recession. No segment of our economy will remain untouched.
‘Shopping?’
Shouldn’t that be, ‘Mandated Shopping?’
Of course that is so sexist, it should be, Persondated Shopping.
I’m going to bed now. Somebody wake me when this nightmare is over.
When Cruz is the 2016 nominee will Christie, McCain, King etc endorse him? If so, what will be their excuse for doing so?
It will be hacked.
” If the Web site doesn’t work soon, even liberals concede that the mandate would have to be delayed, because you can’t very well fine people for failing to buy a product they can’t access.”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Why can’t you do that? It makes as much sense to me as fining them for not buying something they don’t want in the first place.
No- you’re wrong- the republicans do have a plan. I forget the name of the guy who wrote it, but it’s about 2000 pages long and has commonsense ideas.Th problem being, is the Democrats won’t even look at anything the pubs or conservatives have offered.I believe there have been several plans from the right. As you may recall, the pubbies were shut out completely of a any input when this obamanation was first concoted
Once obamacare is stopped Cruz will have to buy coverage. The media won’t want people to remember what he did.
Your’e right, and thank you -— but I Idin;t mean that absolutely nobody had a plan anywhere. Heck, *I* have a plan. The problem is, there isn’t a plan that the Republicans have decided to join forces on and support. Let alone be able to pull shaky Dems over from the other side of the aisle.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.