The Obama administration fixes ACA website - it's fine now

on that note wrote:

LOL wrote: Today they are saying the site will be working well by end of November. (see Fred for link)

I think I'll tell the IRS that my tax return will be ready for them by mid June. (or when I get around to it) Computer problems you know. LOL

Fair enough?

Re: the rewards cards, I use an unregistered one with cash most of the time. A Robo-call for product recalls sounds like a good feature though. Hmmm

Anyone is allowed an automatic 6 month extension on their taxes, so mid June will work for them. You have until Mid October. But you still have a good point, if April was the real deadline.

You can extend filing for 6 months, but payment of any tax owed is still due April 15th.

So if you wait 6 months to file and pay, you'll owe interest and a possible penalty.

RE: The "Actually you can't keep your current healthcare plan" It's really quite amazing the citizens are bending over and taking this crap. Its the same as if the Feds told everyone who bought a 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 car they have to trade it in for a 2014 model or pay to have it upgraded to 2014 specs. Americans are wussies as long as the voting majority thinks they are getting some free stuff.

Rick wrote: If they don't get enough to sign up, they will have to extend everything until they do or they'll have to lie about the math. They may not be able to produce a good website with hundreds of millions, but they have lying mastered.

Plus if they don't get enough to sign up, there will probably be a huge premium increase in 2015.

Among the few who have signed up so far, who would you guess they are? My guess would be that most of them are sick or have pre-existing conditions. You'll probably have some healthy people with low income sign up too just to get cheap, subsidized insurance. Both of those groups will bog down the system and significant premium increases would be necessary.

If you are young and healthy, why not just pay the penalty ($95 or 1%) rather than buy expensive insurance you don't think you'll need? If you get sick or injured and don't have money, you can still go to a hospital for "free" treatment just like people do now.

Those who will have to pay the full premium are probably still standing by waiting to see what will happen. They'll also have the option to pay the penalty but they'll owe the larger 1% of income.

LOL wrote: RE: The "Actually you can't keep your current healthcare plan" It's really quite amazing the citizens are bending over and taking this crap. Its the same as if the Feds told everyone who bought a 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 car they have to trade it in for a 2014 model or pay to have it upgraded to 2014 specs. Americans are wussies as long as the voting majority thinks they are getting some free stuff.

Why do you think they didn't let the public and press vet it for at least a month before voting on it?

pineinthegrass wrote:

Rick wrote: If they don't get enough to sign up, they will have to extend everything until they do or they'll have to lie about the math. They may not be able to produce a good website with hundreds of millions, but they have lying mastered.

Plus if they don't get enough to sign up, there will probably be a huge premium increase in 2015.

Among the few who have signed up so far, who would you guess they are? My guess would be that most of them are sick or have pre-existing conditions. You'll probably have some healthy people with low income sign up too just to get cheap, subsidized insurance. Both of those groups will bog down the system and significant premium increases would be necessary.

If you are young and healthy, why not just pay the penalty ($95 or 1%) rather than buy expensive insurance you don't think you'll need? If you get sick or injured and don't have money, you can still go to a hospital for "free" treatment just like people do now.

Those who will have to pay the full premium are probably still standing by waiting to see what will happen. They'll also have the option to pay the penalty but they'll owe the larger 1% of income.

If you give young healthy people the option of spending $250 month on a new car payment or health insurance with a high deductible, what do you think they will choose? (especially when they know they can always get it if they need it). But you're right, the rates will go up and so will the tax/fine/penalty.

I tried the recently added "Browse" feature at healthcare.gov. It's pretty useless compared to the Colorado exchange site (at least as of today, maybe they'll add more later?).

It will show you prices, but no details about the plans which you would need to make an informed choice. They don't list the deductibles or max out of pocket for the plans like Colorado does (in some cases you can infer the deductible from the name of the plan). You can't look at details such as prescription copays, prescription formulary, office visit copays, etc. There is no "compare" feature like Colorado has. There is nothing I see to click on to get any plan details.

I don't think the prices are accurate either. They only give prices for under age 50 and over 50 (I checked 4 states). I know in Colorado there is a significant difference in premiums for a 50 year old vs. a 25 year old or a 60 year old. And they warn that the policies may still not be accurate due to technical issues.

I don't know if they give more details if you complete an application. I don't know if it's even legal to file a hypothetical application just so you can shop for prices in another state. If you are planning to move to a new state, I wonder what you do to get more info from healthcare.gov? I guess you could go to the insurer's websites, but that would take a lot of time and effort to do. And that wasn't the idea of having a "simple" marketplace to shop from.

pineinthegrass wrote: I tried the recently added "Browse" feature at healthcare.gov. It's pretty useless compared to the Colorado exchange site (at least as of today, maybe they'll add more later?).

It will show you prices, but no details about the plans which you would need to make an informed choice. They don't list the deductibles or max out of pocket for the plans like Colorado does (in some cases you can infer the deductible from the name of the plan). You can't look at details such as prescription copays, prescription formulary, office visit copays, etc. There is no "compare" feature like Colorado has. There is nothing I see to click on to get any plan details.

I don't think the prices are accurate either. They only give prices for under age 50 and over 50 (I checked 4 states). I know in Colorado there is a significant difference in premiums for a 50 year old vs. a 25 year old or a 60 year old. And they warn that the policies may still not be accurate due to technical issues.

I don't know if they give more details if you complete an application. I don't know if it's even legal to file a hypothetical application just so you can shop for prices in another state. If you are planning to move to a new state, I wonder what you do to get more info from healthcare.gov? I guess you could go to the insurer's websites, but that would take a lot of time and effort to do. And that wasn't the idea of having a "simple" marketplace to shop from.

Of course they don't give you the inportant financial details, Pelosi put a clause in the bill that says "you have to buy the policy before you can find out what's actually in the policy".

Oops... Rick beat me to it. I was just typing the same phrase.

I nominate PineintheGrass for our "official MMT" Obamacare guinea pig web site tester and reporter. LOL

Thanks for the feedback on your experiences Pine. You must love torture.

I read somewhere that the new browse calculator is based on 27 year olds for "under 50 prices", and 50 year olds for "over 50 pricing" (see Fred for link) LOL, those HHS guys are funny. What a Klooge!

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/10 ... obamacare/

The complexity of means testing is a big part of the web site headaches, I said a long time ago they made it too complex. And the real fun comes in April 2015 when your file your taxes with the new Obamacare health insurance compliance forms. A new 1099/Obamacare-long form to justify your subsidy.

I feel what's most telling is the real lack of firm complaints by the Democrat politicians. Oh there has been a few grousing about the health care roll out, but not by much.

But I remember over the years how as soon as voter ID laws were proposed, there were outcry's from the left complaining how difficult it is for the poor to go through the trouble of getting a proper picture ID, no matter how many provisions were in the suggested laws to make that process as easy as possible.

There are hundreds if not thousands of people, right now, poor people who think they have signed up for a health insurance policy.

But they haven't. The 834 transmissions from the federal websites to the insurance companies have been garbled, full of errors and not containing enough information that would allow an insurance company to open a policy.

And for a lot of these folks, the insurance companies can't get back to the applicant because they don't have the information needed to interface with the person.

The requirement to have photo ID's for voting is a piker compared to the problems that the federal health insurance system is putting needy people through.

And lower wage earners who currently have insurance are finding out, by the 100 of thousands that their existing policies do not live up to the expectations of the ACA. And those policies are being canceled.

And this is not because the big bad insurance companies have some nefarious plan to milk the lower income policy holders of more money. It's because the LAW, the ACA has told these insurance companies that the policy doesn't live up to the law and they insurance companies have no option but to cancel the policy.

These folks have to find new policies, either with their insurance company or with the federal exchange. Wasn't that easy?

And as a side not, no matter where they finally get an ACA approved policy, their going to have to have some proper form of ID.

Check and checkmate.

The Democrats should be outraged.

Someone wake me when that happens. And people go all bonkers when the Republicans stick to ideological underpinnings and refuse to consider the effect on the economy or the American public.

This whole law touches EVERYONE. At this writing that's over 303 million Americans.

Hey Dems... good luck in 2014.

(and if you ever want me to detail a real fustercluck, ask me to explain "834" files. I've worked with them... and it's a whole new world to a programmer who is not familiar with that standard and how the file is constructed)