Bill Keller Doesn't Get Along Very Well with Reality

The following paragraph is one of the biggest howlers in the history of Ever:

Unless you’ve been bamboozled by the frantic fictions of the right wing, you know that the Affordable Care Act, familiarly known as Obamacare, has begun to accomplish its first goal: enrolling millions of uninsured Americans, many of whom have been living one medical emergency away from the poorhouse. You realize those computer failures that have hampered sign-ups in the early days — to the smug delight of the critics — confirm that there is enormous popular demand. You have probably figured out that the real mission of the Republican extortionists and their big-money backers was to scuttle the law before most Americans recognized it as a godsend and rendered it politically untouchable.

So presumably, this is one of the "frantic fictions of the right wing":

The federal health-care exchange that opened a dozen days ago is marred by snags beyond the widely publicized computer gridlock that has thwarted Americans trying to buy a health plan. Even when consumers have been able to sign up, insurers sometimes can’t tell who their new customers are because of a separate set of computer defects.

The problems stem from a feature of the online marketplace’s computer system that is designed to send each insurer a daily report listing people who have just enrolled. According to several insurance industry officials, the reports are sometimes confusing and duplicative. In some cases, they show — correctly or not — that the same person enrolled and canceled several times on a single day.

As, presumably, is this:

It's a batting average that won't land the federal marketplace for Obamacare into the Healthcare Hall of Fame.

As few as 1 in 100 applications on the federal exchange contains enough information to enroll the applicant in a plan, several insurance industry sources told CNBC on Friday. Some of the problems involve how the exchange's software collects and verifies an applicant's data.

"It is extraordinary that these systems weren't ready," said Sumit Nijhawan, CEO of Infogix, which handles data integrity issues for major insurers including WellPoint and Cigna, as well as multiple Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliates.

Experts said that if Healthcare.gov's success rate doesn't improve within the next month or so, federal officials could face a situation in January in which relatively large numbers of people believe they have coverage starting that month, but whose enrollment applications are have not been processed.

"It could be public relations nightmare," said Nijhawan. Insurers have told his company that just "1 in 100" enrollment applicants being sent from the federal marketplace have provided sufficient, verified information.

[. . .]

"It doesn't surprise me—I've heard similar numbers," said Dan Mendelson, CEO of consulting firm Avalere Health, when asked about the 1-in-100 rate that Infogix cited.

"This is not a traffic issue," Mendelson said. "Right now, the systems aren't working."

And this:

No one knows how many people have managed to enroll because the administration refuses to release those numbers, but the website's launch has been rocky.

Media outlets have struggled to find anyone who's actually been successful. The Washington Post even illustrated that sought-after person as a unicorn, and USA Today called the launch an "inexcusable mess" and a "nightmare."

White House officials initially blamed the problem on an unexpectedly high volume as they had more than 8 million hits in the first week, but after it went offline over the weekend for repairs, officials now acknowledge other problems.

"We've identified the glitches, we've added hardware, we're recoding software, and I can tell you today is better than yesterday, and we are hoping in the very near future to have a seamless process that's what we are aiming for," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said.

However, computer experts say the website has major flaws.

"It wasn't designed well, it wasn't implemented well, and it looks like nobody tested it," said Luke Chung, an online database programmer.

Chung supports the new health care law but said it was not the demand that is crashing the site. He thinks the entire website needs a complete overhaul.

"It's not even close. It's not even ready for beta testing for my book. I would be ashamed and embarrassed if my organization delivered something like that," he said.

Oh, and as for those "millions of uninsured Americans" that Keller tells us have been enrolled . . .

The glitch-plagued rollout of President Barack Obama's signature health care law has been dogged by one big question: How many people have enrolled in an insurance plan?

The White House refuses to release the numbers, leading many to assume they are embarrassingly low. But insurance industry insiders point to another reason: Nobody knows if the numbers they do have are even accurate.

Turns out, some insurance companies say they are receiving data from the administration that is incomplete, duplicative or contradictory, making it difficult to get an accurate count of new enrollment.

[. . .]

So far, the buzz in the insurance industry is that enrollment numbers are falling short of projections. One insurance company executive put it this way, "The numbers aren't as bad as the doomsday people would say. But so far, they're low and they have people worried."

Avik Roy has a theory for why the Obamacare website is crashing: He believes that it is because Team Obama doesn't want you to suffer sticker shock. I am sure that people like Bill Keller will try desperately to dismiss this as yet another "frantic fiction of the right wing," but given just how divorced Keller is from the facts, why should we take anything he has to say regarding this issue seriously? Either Bill Keller is one of the laziest and most inept intellects ever to try to find out and explain facts on Obamacare, or he is congenitally dishonest. He--and other Obamacare defenders--can feel free to take their pick as to which is the case.

Picture a Train. Now, Picture that Train Wrecked.

Now, read Avik Roy:

In recent months, President Obama and his subordinates have waived or delayed a number of Obamacare’s notable features, such as the law’s employer mandate, and its procedures for protecting taxpayers from fraud and identity theft. Earlier this month, in that context, I obtained a heretofore-unpublished memorandum from the Congressional Research Service. The CRS, Congress’ non-partisan in-house think tank, compiled 82 deadlines that the Affordable Care Act mandates upon the first three years of its own implementation. Remarkably, it turns out that the White House has missed half of the deadlines legally required by the ACA. And some of those deadlines remain unmet to this day.

The new CRS memo, dated June 5, 2013, is an addendum to a series of previous reports in which the agency examined missed deadlines during the law’s first two years. The CRS excluded from its analysis deadlines that don’t reflect on the administration’s competence; for example, as states expand Medicaid, the federal spending associated with those expansions occurs more or less automatically. Deadlines that the law imposes on non-federal government actors, like state governments and private companies, were also excluded.

As of May 31, 2013, when the CRS analysis was completed, the White House had yet to meet 9 of 12 deadlines from the first year after the Affordable Care Act was enacted. It failed to meet 22 of 53 deadlines in the second year; another 8 became moot after Congress did not appropriate funds to complete the assigned tasks. In year three, the administration missed 10 out of 17 deadlines. That’s a total of 41 out of 82 deadlines missed.

If you exclude the 9 deadlines that became moot because Congress never appropriated the funds to meet them, the Obama administration missed 41 out of 73 deadlines, or 56 percent.

Now, wait for Team Obama to come along and tell us that there is nothing to see here, and that we should all just move along. Any moment now . . .

Obamacare's Employer Mandate: Delayed

Avik Roy  has the scoop. The mandate was never popular, so one naturally senses politics being behind this decision. As Roy notes, the mandate might have driven up unemployment, so delaying it for a year might keep unemployment from becoming even more of an issue during the 2014 midterm election cycle. Additionally, as Roy points out, delaying the mandate will cause more people to want to enroll in the individual insurance exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act. The following from Roy's post is also notable:

The Affordable Care Act is quite clear as to the effective date of the employer mandate. “The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013,” concludes Section 1513.

The executive branch is charged with enforcing the law, and it can of course choose not to enforce the law if it wants. But people can sue the federal government, and a judge could theoretically force the administration to enforce the mandate.

So the question is: Would anyone sue the Obama administration over this? Employers, of course, will be thrilled to be spared the mandate for one more year. Democratic politicians, similarly, will be glad to have this not hanging over their heads for the 2014 mid-term election.

The wild-card is left-wing activists. Most, you’d think, would defer to the administration on questions of implementation. I’m no lawyer, but it seems to me that all it would take is for one judge to issue an injunction, for an activist to require the administration to enforce the mandate.

The Benjamin Rush Society : Right-of-Center Health Care Policy :: The Federalist Society : Right-of-Center Lawyering and Legal Interpretation

Story here.  And here is a link to the society's homepage. I hope that the Benjamin Rush folks are able to exercise some influence; they have a chance to offer up a positive series of contributions to the health care debate.

We Passed Health Care Reform . . .

And now, we are finding out what is in it: 

Democrats continue to try to dismiss the evidence that Obamacare will dramatically increase the cost of insurance for people who buy it on their own. But on Thursday, the Ohio Department of Insurance announced  that, based on the rates submitted by insurers to date, the average individual-market health insurance premium in 2014 will come in around $420, “representing an increase of 88 percent” relative to 2013. “We have warned of these increases,” said Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor in a statement. “Consumers will have fewer choices and pay much higher premiums for their health insurance starting in 2014.”

The rates that Ohio reported are proposed rates; the Department of Insurance still has to formally approve them. “A total of 14 companies proposed rates for 214 plans to the Department. Projected costs from the companies for providing coverage for the required [by Obamacare] essential health benefits ranged from $282.51 to $577.40 for individual health insurance plans.”

It’s called “rate shock,” but it’s not shocking to people who understand the economics of health insurance. In August 2011, Milliman, one of the nation’s leading actuarial firms, predicted that Obamacare would increase individual-market premiums in Ohio by 55 to 85 percent. This past March, the Society of Actuaries projected that the law would increase premiums in that market by 81 percent. Like good players on “The Price is Right,” they both came in just under the Dept. of Insurance’s figure.

I am pretty sure that the actuaries wish that they were wrong. But it would appear that they might have been all too accurate. My question is why we didn't hear more about this when Obamacare was being debated in Congress? I mean, I would hate to think that supporters of the Affordable (ha!) Care Act just decided to ram the bill through without letting the American people hear about the consequences that would fall on the country if the bill passed. That wasn't what all those honorable representatives and senators were aiming to do, was it?