Obamacare Exchanges Months Behind In Testing IT Data Security 398
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from a Reuters report:
"The federal government is months behind in testing data security for the main pillar of Obamacare: allowing Americans to buy health insurance on state exchanges due to open by October 1. The missed deadlines have pushed the government's decision on whether information technology security is up to snuff to exactly one day before that crucial date, the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general said in a report. As a result, experts say, the exchanges might open with security flaws or, possibly but less likely, be delayed.'They've removed their margin for error,' said Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology. 'There is huge pressure to get (the exchanges) up and running on time, but if there is a security incident they are done. It would be a complete disaster from a PR viewpoint.' The most likely serious security breach would be identity theft, in which a hacker steals the social security numbers and other information people provide when signing up for insurance."
Social security numbers? (Score:3, Insightful)
"hacker steals the social security numbers and other information people provide when signing up for insurance."
Why would anyone provide a social security number to be used for medical purposes?
Even supporters should want to kill this thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Obamacare failing doesn't serve anyone's interests. And it won't succeed. Its too poorly set up to do anything but fail.
So if you want socialized medicine... this will only make your idea appear stupid or your political allies too inept to execute such a plan.
If you don't want socialized medical care this will effectively give it to you anyway... but it will be even more expensive... badly run... and generally all the negatives will be more negative.
So lets not do this... kill it and restart the debate on it. Does that mean the supporters will have to ACTUALLY get support for their program this time instead of sneaking it through? Yes. But they should have done that in the first place and this is so screwed up in large part because they broke the rules.
I know what the supporters are going to say... that they followed the letter of the law. Possibly by the narrowest possible definition. But you know damn well that you broke the spirit of the law in half getting there.
That said, that isn't the point of my post. My point is that indifferent to all that, Obamacare is unfixable. It needs to be put down like a rabid dog and THEN we can evaluate what our options are after that. But causing American insurance premiums to double is not in any one's interest. Stop it.
If you care about the poor. Stop it.
If you care about jobs. Stop it.
If you care about the country. Stop it.
At this point, the only reason to support it is ego... aka fear of looking like a fool after investing so much political capital into the issue... or ignorance.
That's all that's left.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, that's why I love public health insurance. I don't have to buy a 3rd yacht some insurance exec whose daddy got him a cushy job. I get better health care and CHEAPER then I ever got with my garbage "high end" health insurance in the states. Yeah I may pay a bit more than a poor person(and probably pay some of their share), but not having to support worthless execs means that it is cheaper than that private garbage.
Before mouthing off about costs, how about do a little research? Like the fact that the US spends roughly 2x as much(as a % of GDP) than any other industrialized nation(who all have public health insurance) and yet the health outcomes are not any better for all that cash spent. Oh I'm sorry, did I use facts with a Republican? My mistake.
Re:Is anyone really surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's face it: prevention is not profitable for the medical industrial complex. Waiting for things to be come an emergency means the costs are much higher and the hospitals (all most all owned by huge corporations) either get paid or write off the bad debt to offset taxes. Prevention just can't offer the revenue potential.
Just locks-in the current system (Score:5, Insightful)
What's even dumber is the concept of state-level exchanges.
A primary driver of high health-care costs is the balkanization of healthcare across states.
Allow the voluntary harmonization of various states' health care codes, which would in turn allow insurance providers to offer the same plan in several states. The 'health care exchanges' offered in the Obamacare bill would have been a perfect opportunity to allow capitalism to work to lower costs and increase competitive pressures - this plan merely ossifies the state-level segmentation of the marketplace.
Re:Social security numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
How else will the IRS verify we are legally enrolled in a plan, and don't have to pay the fine/tax/fine/tax?
Re:Even supporters should want to kill this thing (Score:3, Insightful)
So if you want socialized medicine... this will only make your idea appear stupid or your political allies too inept to execute such a plan.
If you don't want socialized medical care this will effectively give it to you anyway... but it will be even more expensive... badly run... and generally all the negatives will be more negative.
Too bad RomneyObamacare (the Romney MA plan and Obama's plan are basically identical) isn't actually socialized medicine, eh? I wonder what would have happened had Obama created a National Health Service like other civilized countries.
My overall take is that it will suck, but it will suck somewhat less than if it hadn't been created. There is every indication that there will be fewer people without insurance, fewer medical bankruptcies, and less insurance company shenanigans. It's far from perfect, but shouldn't we at least try it to find out?
Does that mean the supporters will have to ACTUALLY get support for their program this time instead of sneaking it through?
Please explain how a measure that was front-page news for months, was discussed in a presidential election, and had massive ad campaigns about it was in any way snuck through. Unless you're complaining about the process in the Senate that allowed 58 of 100 votes to constitute a majority.
But causing American insurance premiums to double is not in any one's interest.
RomneyObamacare doesn't cause insurance premiums to double for everybody, it causes insurance premiums to go up for richer and younger and healthier people to pay for the health care of poorer and older and sicker people. That's definitely in the interests of poorer and older and sicker people, and is better for them than no health insurance at all, which is what they have now.
My point is that indifferent to all that, Obamacare is unfixable. It needs to be put down like a rabid dog and THEN we can evaluate what our options are after that.
Again, the counterargument here is not "RomneyObamacare is great, it solves everything". It's "It sucks less than pre-RomneyObamacare, so we should try living with it while we come up with something better." The something better may well be completely different from RomneyObamacare, but in the meantime you'll have fewer people refusing transportation to a hospital after a heart attack (yes, this really happens).
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please explain what is so different about the USA that Obamacare-like systems work in pretty much the entire civilized world except the USA.
The only thing wrong here is your assumption that there are other Obamacare-like systems elsewhere in the world.
is the USA so incredibly retarded
This. Due to the massive cost increases in health care that Obamacare encourages, I'm not even sure it'll succeed in its alleged primary goal, improving health care coverage.
And the law is so bad that allies of the people who passed the law are trying hard to get out from being covered by the law. There's been a series of waivers of various provisions of Obamacare that went to allies of the President and certain congresspeople. I'm sure we all appreciate the passage of laws which are supposed to be for our own good and for which the allies of the people who advocated the laws are at least partially exempt.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Insightful)
Like hell you don't pay a damned thing. Ever heard of taxes? Worse, there's a lot of corruption here hiding massive healthcare failures, including huge numbers of people who are now dead who shouldn't be due to poor care [wikipedia.org]. I wouldn't hold up the UK's socialised healthcare system as an example to follow.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:2, Insightful)
Those kinds of cover ups exist here too. Private doctors working for a private hospital killed my grandfather. They misdiagnosed him repeatedly and failed to properly treat him even for what they misdiagnosed him with.
The likely difference here is that you will never hear of that case due to NDAs and settlements. The NHS can't do that, so you eventually hear about it.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:4, Insightful)
What will happen next is you will end up in the ER for a real medical condition, the hospital will write it off and I and other taxpayers will be stuck paying. If you are very lucky someone like my mother will get the hospital to transfer you from the ER to a regular bed and they will pay for your treatment as an act of charity. Then the hospital will have even more cost to write off and for the rest of us to pay.
If you are less lucky you will be treated only in the ER and released to die at home. Cheaper for the taxpayer, but clearly not the superior choice.
Where did you get these numbers? Their are low cost plans for those who cannot pay.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:2, Insightful)
Scandinavia is where things work.
Scandinavia is magic! Of course nothing like UHC could work in US, any more than it could work in the rest of Western Europe, or Canada, or Japan or Australia or ... uh wait, I meant it couldn't work in 'merica. Yeah, that's it, the rest of the developed world is magic. What a shame 'merica isn't.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Insightful)
The other option of course being what we have in the USA that people simply die from lack of treatment.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/insurance-24-year-dies-toothache/story?id=14438171 [go.com]
Before you claim that man was stupid try to remember the pain he was in. No one makes good decisions in that kind of state.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't ballyhoo our [non-existent] National Health Service to the world as the pinnacle of Socialism while accepting charity from a country we look down our noses at for being uncivilized and barbaric with regard to health care.
It would be like us claiming our system is perfect in the face of Obamacare while accepting donations of chicken bones and rattles from Amazonian witch doctors.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Insightful)
The current system is a bigger clusterf**k than anything you're imagining.
which they turn around and fund their R&D with.
They'd like you to believe that. And it seems that you do. Sure, some do some R&D. But all use a lot of that money for fat bonuses for their execs, and other dubious purposes such as advertising. I have not heard of insurers such as Blue Cross Blue Shield doing any research at all. Those who do, don't do much basic R&D. Instead they lean on publicly funded institutions of higher education for that. They get a free ride there. What good is the heavy advertising they do for name brand drugs? Why are these ads aimed at patients? Most patients are not medical professionals. Then, what of the money they spend on "intellectual property" to "protect" their precious drugs? Some of the monies that should be spent on our health goes towards lobbyists whose jobs are to persuade or bribe government to shore up monopolies and destroy competition. And the whole thing is aided and abetted by people like you who blindly believe in Big Pharma and friends.
Formerly free society? You talk like our current health care system is some paragon of competitive efficiency. It's not. It's full of fraud and waste. It's dirty pool. Price controls? There's an excellent method of price control: Competition. Too bad there isn't much competition, not that there's scope for it in all areas. But where there could be competition, there isn't. A person who needs emergency medical treatment obviously has no time or opportunity to comparison shop. Such people are the perfect captive consumers who routinely get bilked. It is no coincidence that our care is geared towards emergencies and not prevention. Obamacare has a lot of flaws, not least thanks to Republican attempts to deliberately screw it up. But it's a start. The medical community has only themselves to blame for bringing this upon them. They've had decades to demonstrate the effectiveness of the current system. Instead, they've abused their position of authority, their power, to bleed us all.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sometimes I'll be all fine and dandy but end up getting a surprise medical bill in the hundreds from a year ago because the insurance company took its sweet time to deny the claim.
I'd drop my health insurance because its worthless (what good is it if I end having to pay hundreds of dollars in doctor's bills anyway?) but because of the so-called Affordable Healthcare Act I'll end up being a criminal if I don't buy that executive his third yacht.
I have high blood pressure, among other things, and my family is concerned about my health but I think it's detrimental to my health just trying to get healthcare itself so I no longer go to the doctor because it's too much stress to deal with.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:0, Insightful)
Nothing about Obamacare would put any upward pressure on prices. This is all about the insurance companies gouging us while it's still legal to do so.
The hilarious thing is that you are blaming the law that will cut back on the gouging for the gouging.
Truly, the USA probably is too stupid to survive.
Re:What a clusterf**k. (Score:5, Insightful)
In Britain, doctors get paid for patients they have who do not visit. That's a financial incentive to keep people healthy. My health plan (in the US) gives free preventative services. I've lived in Australia and Canada, and they have vastly superior and cheaper healthcare systems than the US -- and that includes preventative services. But my US healthcare, whilst much more expensive, is vastly inferior to what I got in Australia (in particular)