Obamacare has been mired by blunders that will no doubt only get worse in the days ahead. Not just technological blunders but also blunders that will hold YOUR healthcare hostage. This post will be continuously updated so you can see how the Obamacare blunders are affecting you. Two new Obamacare Blunders added today: 1) According to The Hill, a contractor heavily involved in repairing healthcare.gov was previously criticized for endangering the personal data of more than 6 million government beneficiaries through insufficient security controls. Quality Software Services, Inc. was considered a high risk by investigators, after it was learned the company did not stop employees from using unauthorized USB devices with sensitive Medicare systems. According to a June report by the HHS inspector general, employees connected unsanctioned devices, such as iPods, to 29 or 30 of the studied workstations which all had access to personal data for millions of Medicare patients. 2) As reported by CBS News, early enrollment figures for healthcare.gov show that the day after launch, only six enrollments occurred. This report came from notes from meetings held at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The health care exchanges need to average 39,000 enrollees a day to meet the goal of seven million by March 1. 3) An internal Administration memo, originally written on September 6, lists numerous reasons to believe healthcare.gov wouldnt be ready Oct 1. The memo warned that in the days leading up to the launch, the system hadnt been sufficiently tested, exposing a level of uncertainty that can be deemed high risk. This news is devastating to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, as it appears she knowingly falsely certified the site as functional. 4) According to the Wall Street Journal, online exchanges are causing endless headaches for Doctors. One Maryland doctor looked up his name and was surprised to see himself as participating in 36 insurance plans from five different carriers. In addition, many were listed at the wrong addresses or covered therapy services which he does not provide. In addition to providing wrong information, the lists will give consumers a false impression of how big the networks actually are. State exchanges are already warning shoppers to ask doctors directly if they accept the new plan. 5) According to CNN, software tester Ben Simo of Arizona discovered that, until recently, it was possible for anyone to easily reset your healthcare.gov password without your knowledge and potentially hijack your account. Simo showed how quickly anyone could have gained access to accounts and viewed the sites unencrypted source code in any browser to find the password reset code. 6) As Breitbart reported, during HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testimony, the helathcare.gov site crash. The site remained down thirty-minutes into Sebelius testimony, which only reinforced what a colossal disaster the Obamacare exchanges are. 7) As the ultimate blunder, NBC News uncovered that the White House knew that Obamacare would result in millions of Americans losing their current insurance policies. President Barack Obama said in 2009 if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan. And in 2012 Obama continued repeating that lie: “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance. Their sources “deeply involved” in Obamacare admitted “50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a ‘cancellation’ letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies dont meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience ‘sticker shock.’” 8) According to Mother Jones, a liberal magazine which supports Obamacare, healthcare.gov is vulnerable to a hacking technique known as clickjacking, where invisible links are planted on a legitimate web page, tricking users into giving up sensitive, personal data. Kyle Wilhoit, a threat researcher at Trend Micro, a Japanese security software company, studied the Healthcare.gov portal with his security team and found a moderate risk for hacking due to an easy-to-fix coding problem that leaves the site vulnerable to clickjacking. This concern is only amplified with 15 states having their own exchange websites, each with unique vulnerabilities. 9)According to Bloomberg, on October. 27, 2013 the disastrous healthcare.gov faced even more problems as the Verizon-operated data services hub stopped operating. Officials have declined to say what went wrong and no one knows just how long it would take to repair. 10)The Daily Caller reported that CGI Federal, the Canadian firm which received the no-bid contract to build the $678 million healthcare.gov, is lead by a classmate of First Lady Michelle Obama. Toni Townes-Whitley, President of CGI Federal, is a 1985 graduate of Princeton. Both she and Michelle are members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni. 11)According to The Weekly Standard, even though healthcare.gov informs users that the U.S Department of Homeland Security may verify immigration status or naturalized citizenship status, the Obama administration is making it clear that any possible violations of laws will result in no action. It appears that if the website ever starts to function, illegal immigrant applying for coverage will be protected from prosecution. 12) CBS News reports a huge spike in people enrolling in Medicaid rather than buying private health insurance. Not only does this add to the unsustainable costs of that entitlement program, it shrinks the pool of healthy people the insurance exchanges require. 13) During Congressional testimony, the contractors who helped build healthcare.gov admitted they could not create their own accounts on the site. As reported in AP, contractors were not comfortable with the site going live as it was not tested and ready to handle confidential information. They didnt even remove dummy JavaScript files from the live site, which included character names from Star Wars and Transformers. 14) According to the Washington Post, even state bureaucrats with Obamacare’s endless technical glitches. While HHS is trying to claim the website is improving, insurance commissioners responsible for overseeing insurance industries in states relying on the federal government to run health-care exchanges still cannot get answers to their desperate phone calls to Washington. 15) As reported in the Wall Street Journal, healthcare.gov is sending erroneous data to insurers. What little data they are receiving is overburdening them because of the frequent errors, such as duplicate enrollments, missing data fields, spouses reported as children, and multiple spouses on single applications. 16) As reported in Forbes, in just 3 states, 500,000 individuals have had their insurance policies cancelled. In addition to the disaster in Florida, we now learn Kaiser Permanente in California sent notices to 160,000 people (about 1/2 of their state customers) cancelling their coverage. Also, Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh dropped about 20% of their individual customers while Independence Blue Cross of Philadelphia is dropping about 45%. 17) According to knowledgeable programmers on Reddit, the homepage for the insurance exchange requests 62 separate JavaScript files, creating an absurd load burden on servers thanks to sloppy programming. 18) According to Kaiser Health News, 300,000 Floridians received insurance coverage cancellation letters from Florida Blue. That is 80% of their policy holders in the state. 19) CBS News reported that a “shop and browse” feature that was added to the Obamacare website in order to offer customers the ability to see premium price estimates to creating an account is wildly inaccurate and misleading. It often underestimates actual premiums by over 50%. 20) Consumer Reports magazine, which has supported Obamacare since 2009, suggested to readers that due to privacy concerns, everyone should (S)tay away from Healthcare.gov for at least another month if you can. Their software tested opined, “Hopefully, that will be long enough for its software vendors to clean up the mess they’ve made. 21) On Sean called the Obamacare hotline on air and asked the representative on the phone about call volume along with other questions. Just days later, she was fired for being honest about the glitches in the program. 22) On Bloomberg TV, Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Burwell has refused to guarantee that the Obamacare website will be fixed by December 15, even though the individual mandate goes into effect that same month. 23) According to Politico, because the White House knew the Federal exchange website disaster would be investigated by House Republicans, the Administration had a “bunker mentality” and only sought advice from partisan “trusted campaign tech experts.” 24) The New York Times reported contractors and specialists have said fixing the site’s problems soon is “unrealistic,” as “more than 5 five million lines of software code may need to be rewritten before the web site runs properly.” 25) The Washington Examiner discovered that CGI Federal, the Canadian firm which designed the Obamacare health insurance exchange website, was given a no bid contract for the work. At an estimated $635 billion cost to taxpayers, Digital Trends notes this is bigger price tag than Facebook. 26) According to The Washington Examiner, Obamacare’s exchange website was tested only a week prior to launch. 27) According to Millward Brown Digital research firm, the Obamacare exchange website had an estimated 9.47 million unique visitors during the first week. Of those visitors, 3.72 started the registration process, but only 1 million registered. Only 36,000 completed enrollment. CNBC’s initial report showed 99% of Obamacare applicants “hit a wall.” 28) Even prominent Democrats admit the website is a disaster. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told ABC News that the Obamacare website glitches are “unacceptable.” On MSNBC, former White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs believes people should be fired. 29) The Hill reports that states are already facing a serious threat of identity theft, as fake insurance exchanges are being launched by cyber criminals trying to steal private information. 30) Reporters on CNN and MSNBC have tried and failed to sign up for Obamacare while on air. 31) After California state officials initially trumpeted that more than 5 million people viewed their $313 million state exchange website on the first day, the LA Times reported they were forced to admit the actual number was 645,000. A local television news channel reported that traffic led to zero completed applications. 32) According to the Times Record, Arkansas state exchange launch was so disastrous, their launch event forced applicants to resort to paper applications. 33) A New Jersey television station reported that even though their state exchange seemed to create accounts, but after an extensive application the site only returned error messages. 34) According to The Wall Street Journal, in North Carolina, Blue Cross Blue Shield said it only enrolled one person in the state by the end of the second day. The state has yet to release updated numbers. 35) The Detroit Free Press reported many “filled waiting rooms” at a Dearborn, Mich., community organization where “nearly every attempt to pull up the website resulted in error messages” on the marketplace website’s first day. Ann Flood, the newly appointed director of the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services said there is no confirmation of anyone signing up on the state exchange. 36) Chad Henderson of Georgia, who became the media’s poster boy as one of the few to actually sign up for Obamacare lied about his success, according to a Reason Magazine investigation. On LinkedIn, Henderson lists himself as a volunteer for Organizing for Action. 37) WBAL reported that week into its launch, the Maryland exchange had reportedly enrolled only 326 people. 38) In Connecticut, a local television station reported that the launch of the state exchange will be delayed for weeks. 39) According to the Alaska Dispatch, residents of Alaska have struggled to use their state exchange website, and there were no early reports of anyone enrolling in an insurance program. 40) As reported by Breitbart, the Nevada state exchange was not tested in September, even though the state started to run television ads promoting it. Their exchange Facebook page has been bombarded with frustrated comments showing how dysfunctional the website is.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 22:44:13 +0000