The Obamacare Website is a Trojan Horse

           The website is not the story.  If the website never works – who cares, fill out an application, mail it to the Obamacare administrator, they will mail you back your options  You pick one of the options, mail back the form and wala, you have Obamacare insurance.

The website does demonstrate just another case of the administration’s incompetence but it will not have dire consequences for the Affordability Act.  I am a techie and (only from the news sound bites) I believe that the problem with the site is most likely, the attempt to validate each applicant’s income.  I do not know how they do it, but my guess is that they are taking an applicant’s information and querying the IRS’ database AND states’ databases.  The IRS database has old information with regard to an individual’s income.  Businesses only file once per year reports on each of their employees’ earnings.  The states, however, have quarterly income reports on each employee.  At least in Pennsylvania where I conduct business, I have to file a quarterly unemployment tax return that lists each employee by name, with their earnings.  A web server (the computer that hosts the Obamacare computer system) has to go out and request individuals’ income verification information from various sources.  The webserver may have been designed to handle all the volume of traffic that Obamacare is generating – but have the states systems been designed for the same volume?  If this is the problem, the answer is easy, replicate the states’ data onto the Obamacare web server.  Wala, problem solved.

But the website is NOT the story.  No matter what the technical problem is – it can be fixed.  The story is the hundreds of thousands of Americans that are receiving letters from their current health insurance companies telling them that there existing insurance plans are no longer valid under the Obamacare rules.  Obamacare requires that you get free contraception, free mental health benefits, and other benefits that you did not have in your old plan.  So you can now upgrade to the new Obamacare compliant plan.  AND, it will only cost you double what you used to pay.

This is the story. Senator Manchin (Democrat from West Virginia) stated that: “Affordable (in the Affordable Care Act) was not supposed to mean you pay more and get less.”  Yes, if you do not want the extra benefits Obamacare throws in, and your deductible goes up, you are getting less – but paying more.

Remember the sales pitch from the President?  “If you like your existing insurance plan and you like your existing doctors, nothing will change. Period!  End of Story.”  We should also remember Representative Pelosi’s statement: “Everyone will pay less for health insurance.”  Three-hundred-thousand people in Florida having been told that they can no longer have their existing insurance plans.  The same has been reported for one-hundred-fifty-thousand people in California.  This is just the start of such notifications.  There is a very good chance that Obamacare could result in less people having health insurance NOT more – as the President promised.  At the very least, the average cost for American health insurance will significantly increase.

Representative Pelosi was more accurate when she said: “We have to pass the bill before we will know what is in it.”  She was right – and now we are finding out what is in the bill.  And, it is not pretty.  I was aware that the Medicaid role was supposed to be expanded by 30 million.  Bit, I did not know that there were going to be subsidies to individuals that make less than 400% of the poverty level.  How much more debt can we afford?

Back to the website: if you were looking to purchase a car, would you not consider a Ford because their webpage was temporarily unavailable?  The cars are great, who cares about the website.  In Obamacare’s case, the product is flawed – so who cares about the website.

The administration is probably very pleased that the website is so horrendous.  The news coverage of the website is the Trojan Horse covering up the real story – that the Obamacare product itself is severely flawed.

With all that negativity about the website and the Affordable Care Act stated.  I have one surprising observation to add.  I do not believe that the Affordable Care Act should be delayed.  The uncertainty of whether or not this law will ever become reality, and what its actual impacts will be, have been the main driver of our jobless recovery.  We need to implement Obamacare so we know what it is, fix it, and allow businesses to figure out how to run their businesses (and hire people) in this brand new world.  It is not going to be a smooth ride – so let us get it over with as soon as we can.