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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Tue October 01, 2013 10:11 pm 
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Orpheus wrote:
I tried to register just now and couldn't. I for one am very excited about maybe being able to go to the doctor for less than a million dollars.

Unless you have a pre-existing condition or make poverty line wages, your demographic (young male) is the one that has to shell out to make this system work. I'd be curious to know if you have an idea what individual coverage would have cost you before versus what it will cost you now.


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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 02, 2013 12:17 am 
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simple schoolboy wrote:
Orpheus wrote:
I tried to register just now and couldn't. I for one am very excited about maybe being able to go to the doctor for less than a million dollars.

Unless you have a pre-existing condition or make poverty line wages, your demographic (young male) is the one that has to shell out to make this system work. I'd be curious to know if you have an idea what individual coverage would have cost you before versus what it will cost you now.


I purchased individual insurance when it became mandatory in MA - it was more expensive going through BCBSMA as an individual than the health insurance offered by my company. to the tune of an additional $100 per pay check- so $200 a month more... are you under the impression that it would be cheaper if he paid as an individual? that wasn't my experience. I had to drop it and go back to the company offered plan.

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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 02, 2013 1:38 am 
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how expensive are the catestrophic plans?


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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 02, 2013 2:05 am 
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simple schoolboy wrote:
Orpheus wrote:
I tried to register just now and couldn't. I for one am very excited about maybe being able to go to the doctor for less than a million dollars.

Unless you have a pre-existing condition or make poverty line wages, your demographic (young male) is the one that has to shell out to make this system work. I'd be curious to know if you have an idea what individual coverage would have cost you before versus what it will cost you now.


I'm pretty broke. My mother works in the healthcare field and thinks I will pay very little (<100) or nothing. My insurance at my old job would have been about $200 a month had I bought in.


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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 02, 2013 10:33 am 
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I'm so confused.


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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 02, 2013 10:38 am 
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Electromatic wrote:
how expensive are the catestrophic plans?


I'm not sure they offer those, I think "bronze" is the lowest coverage level which is really not that bad for the price if your employer doesn't offer coverage or what they do offer sucks.

What will be more interesting than the price will be the wait times and availability of care a couple of months after the coverage kicks in. The media is so focused on price that I haven't read a lot capacity.

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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 02, 2013 12:26 pm 
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The exchange here in NY is working. I registered just to check the prices compared to what we pay through my wife's job for a family plan (very good coverage). The price was about $25 a month more but the copay would be slightly lower. I don't really plan on swithching at the moment but if we do decide to have a second kid my wife will probably leave her job so I may go to the exchange. I work for a very small company and the rates are much higher than at my wife's job so I think I would actually save money by using the exchange.

I'm curious to know if anyone's premiums have been going up year to year before last year when the ACA's enactment became imminent? Is it the ACA causing rates to go up or is it just rates going up as they have for years?

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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 02, 2013 12:36 pm 
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vegman wrote:
I'm curious to know if anyone's premiums have been going up year to year before last year when the ACA's enactment became imminent? Is it the ACA causing rates to go up or is it just rates going up as they have for years?



I work for a Fortune 100 company and our rates have been climbing every year since I started in 2001. We pay ~$75/week for my wife, 2 year old daughter, and myself for good coverage which is $15/week higher than a year ago, but that rate is indexed to your pay so someone who makes less money would pay less. The only issue we have had is that the neonatal care doctor my daughter saw 18 hours after birth was not a plan-covered doctor, even though the hospital and delivery procedure were cover after the first $1000. It took a few angry phone calls to Aetna, but they ended up covering it after we negotiated with the hospital to lower his fee*. I feel very lucky to get this kind of coverage in today's economy.


*for those who don't know, hospitals will negotiate their prices if ask.

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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 02, 2013 5:36 pm 
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broken iris wrote:
vegman wrote:
I'm curious to know if anyone's premiums have been going up year to year before last year when the ACA's enactment became imminent? Is it the ACA causing rates to go up or is it just rates going up as they have for years?



I feel very lucky to get this kind of coverage in today's economy.



Same here. We pay just a little more our family plan with dental. My wife works for a not for profit and I wonder how long they'll be able to keep the rates reasonable. They've crept up every year for the four years that she's been there.

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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 02, 2013 6:40 pm 
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My rates are ok for single, but for multiple people on the same policy is horrible. Same with my wife's coverage. So instead of us both being on one plan, we each have our own individual through our employers. That is all good, it just is irritating how much it increases if you add someone. It is more than double, which doesn't make sense to me. At all.

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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 02, 2013 6:47 pm 
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E.H. Ruddock wrote:
My rates are ok for single, but for multiple people on the same policy is horrible. Same with my wife's coverage. So instead of us both being on one plan, we each have our own individual through our employers. That is all good, it just is irritating how much it increases if you add someone. It is more than double, which doesn't make sense to me. At all.

it's intentional on the part of the insurance companies- they don't want to cover your dependents.

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you're delusional. you are a sad sad person. fuck off. you're mentally ill beyond repair. i don't need your shit. dissapear.

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people change. people stay the same. people are so often disappointing - random PM, person unnamed


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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 02, 2013 7:03 pm 
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malice wrote:
E.H. Ruddock wrote:
My rates are ok for single, but for multiple people on the same policy is horrible. Same with my wife's coverage. So instead of us both being on one plan, we each have our own individual through our employers. That is all good, it just is irritating how much it increases if you add someone. It is more than double, which doesn't make sense to me. At all.

it's intentional on the part of the insurance companies- they don't want to cover your dependents.

This made me go look up what I could pay, if I were single. $41.67 bi-weekly. $116.69 for all 5 of us. Vision and dental are extra. The site was also kind enough to show that my employer costs are over $700.


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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 02, 2013 7:13 pm 
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Self wrote:
malice wrote:
E.H. Ruddock wrote:
My rates are ok for single, but for multiple people on the same policy is horrible. Same with my wife's coverage. So instead of us both being on one plan, we each have our own individual through our employers. That is all good, it just is irritating how much it increases if you add someone. It is more than double, which doesn't make sense to me. At all.

it's intentional on the part of the insurance companies- they don't want to cover your dependents.

This made me go look up what I could pay, if I were single. $41.67 bi-weekly. $116.69 for all 5 of us. Vision and dental are extra. The site was also kind enough to show that my employer costs are over $700.

I'm shocked, frankly - every plan I've had in the last 15 years has charged more than twice to cover spouses or "plus-one" inclusions - although I believe coverage of children only was more reasonable.

My sister tells me she has the same experience in NY

_________________
Dev wrote:
you're delusional. you are a sad sad person. fuck off. you're mentally ill beyond repair. i don't need your shit. dissapear.

Spoiler: show
people change. people stay the same. people are so often disappointing - random PM, person unnamed


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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 02, 2013 7:37 pm 
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malice wrote:
Self wrote:
malice wrote:
E.H. Ruddock wrote:
My rates are ok for single, but for multiple people on the same policy is horrible. Same with my wife's coverage. So instead of us both being on one plan, we each have our own individual through our employers. That is all good, it just is irritating how much it increases if you add someone. It is more than double, which doesn't make sense to me. At all.

it's intentional on the part of the insurance companies- they don't want to cover your dependents.

This made me go look up what I could pay, if I were single. $41.67 bi-weekly. $116.69 for all 5 of us. Vision and dental are extra. The site was also kind enough to show that my employer costs are over $700.

I'm shocked, frankly - every plan I've had in the last 15 years has charged more than twice to cover spouses or "plus-one" inclusions - although I believe coverage of children only was more reasonable.

My sister tells me she has the same experience in NY

My insurance from my employer is the exact same company my wife's employer uses. So, they are giving us single coverage x2 for cheaper than if one would add the other to the same policy. Her rates are a little less because she is a State employee, but it is still with the same company. :/

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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Fri October 04, 2013 4:59 pm 
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According to the Daily Fail, >1% of visitors are signing up.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2442115/EXCLUSIVE-Less-1-cent-Web-visitors-signing-Obamacare-state-health-exchange-websites.html

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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Fri October 04, 2013 5:36 pm 
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broken iris wrote:

Of course the vast majority aren't signing up. I bet a huge number of hits they got over the last few days are from news organizations and people just curious if the site is working or not.


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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Fri October 04, 2013 6:29 pm 
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broken iris wrote:


I read somewhere that in most states a majority are ending up being eligible for Medicaid.


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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Fri October 04, 2013 8:55 pm 
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cutuphalfdead wrote:
broken iris wrote:

Of course the vast majority aren't signing up. I bet a huge number of hits they got over the last few days are from news organizations and people just curious if the site is working or not.


That's pretty much what the article says.

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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 09, 2013 12:55 pm 
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Quote:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/obamacare-site-hits-reset-button-on-passwords-as-contractors-scramble/


Obamacare site hits reset button on passwords as contractors scramble
Three years wasn't enough time to get this massive IT effort past the finish line.

Amid all the attention, bugs, and work happening at Healthcare.gov in light of the Affordable Care Act, potential registrants talking to phone support today have been told that all user passwords are being reset to help address the site's login woes. And the tech supports behind Healthcare.gov will be asking more users to act in the name of fixing the site, too. According to registrants speaking with Ars, individuals whose logins never made it to the site's database will have to re-register using a different username, as their previously chosen names are now stuck in authentication limbo.

The website for the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare") launched just last week. With all the scrutiny and debate happening, if ever there was a website launch that was "too big to fail," this was it. So, of course, it did—depending on how you define "failure." The inability of Obamacare portals to keep up with the traffic demands initially put upon them has been seized by politicians and conservative pundits as evidence that Obamacare "is not ready for prime time" in the words of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Now, a week later, the site appears to be stabilizing, with waiting times dropping dramatically for those who haven't been able to register before.

A test of the site this morning had me waiting four minutes to get to the signup page; others got on instantly. But problems persist beyond the front door. The contractors responsible for the exchange—CGI Federal for the website itself, Quality Software Systems Inc. (QSSI) for the information "hub" that determines eligibility for programs and provides the data on qualified insurance plans, and Booz Allen for enrollment and eligibility technical support—are scrambling to deploy more fixes. Technical support call center operators continue to handle an onslaught of calls from users who can't get back into the system after registering.

In addition to would-be Healthcare.gov registrants notifying Ars about the password reset and login limbos, Ars learned that changes made to profiles already within the system may not be saved either—a problem that is only indicated by a very non-descriptive error message.

Ars attempted to contact the contractors with Healthcare.gov but did not receive a response as of this writing.


Three years is not enough

CGI has had some experience with these exchanges in the past. It built the Web portal for Massachusetts' "Romneycare" and is building exchanges for a number of other states. So with that experience behind them, why, with three years to prepare, did these sites have such a rough first week?

Those familiar with how Federal IT projects usually roll will suggest an alternative question: with three years to prepare a system that is expected to cost $683.81 million—and much of that preparation being bureaucratic haggling over the rules for its operation—how did the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and CGI manage to get anything up at all?

Federal IT projects are infamous for blowing out the "iron triangle" of project management—cost, scope, and schedule. Healthcare.gov hits all three sides of the triangle. Because of the legislative mandate for Healthcare.gov and its state-run cohorts, the project was handed a massive scope. With Congress eager to cut its throat, the program has been highly budget-sensitive. And with a hard deadline of October 1 and a heavy up-front regulatory process required to create the specifications for the portal, three years was a very tight deadline.

Based on the Federal IT Dashboard, which tracks the project status and risk for most of the federal government's major IT programs, it would appear that HHS and the Obama Administration were relatively confident that the exchange sites would launch on time. However, they were less confident about it coming in under budget. Known as the "CMS CCIIO Healthcare Insurance Exchange IT Investment," the program was assigned a "medium risk" evaluation (A "3" on a scale of 5) at the end of July. That rating wasn't because there was concern about the schedule. Instead, the risk rating was assigned because HHS' Chief Information Officer Frank Baitman was concerned about potential cost overruns for the website implementation.

There were even earlier causes for concern. Back in March, concerns about the funding levels for the program prompted Baitman and HHS management to rate the program as "high risk"—giving it a score of 1 out of 5. In June, the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan auditing body that provides oversight reports to Congress, said that it was still a crapshoot as to whether the system would work on time. This uncertainty persisted because the hub being built by QSSI still hadn't been completely tested (the hub is responsible for making automated decisions about eligibility). While the policies to govern how the hub works—and how various state systems were supposed to work—had been completed, there was still a lot of code to be written to make those policies into an actual system.

All of that pushed the development of the system closer and closer to the deadline. As one reddit user posted when the site ran into trouble on October 1, "My wife works on this project but not as a developer. Last night she said, 'I have no idea how the site is going to go live tomorrow.'"
Garbage in, garbage out

The result of the headlong rush to October 1 was a system that had never been tested at anything like the load it experienced on its first day of operation (if it was tested with loads at all). Those looking for a reason for the site's horrible performance on its first day had plenty of things to choose from.

First of all, there's the front-end site itself. The first page of the registration process (once you get to it) has 2,099 lines of HTML code, but it also calls 56 JavaScript files and 11 CSS files. That's not exactly optimal for heavy-load pages.

Navigating the site once you get past registration is something of a cheese chase through the rat-maze. "It's like a bad, boring video game where you try to grunt and hack your way through to the next step," one site user told Ars.

Once you get through all that, it’s not clear that it's going to do you any good. Underlying problems in the back-end code—including the data hub built by QSSI—have been causing errors in determining whether individuals are eligible for subsidized plans under the program. In DC, that means health care plan prices won't be available to people registering through DC's portal until November. It may also mean that others who have registered already at the federal and state exchanges may get sticker shock later.

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 Post subject: Re: Anyone Try to Register at Healthcare.gov?
PostPosted: Wed October 23, 2013 5:03 pm 
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