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ACA Running Thread

ONW said:
http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/12/news/economy/obamacare-exchanges/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Obamacare sign-ups jump to 3.3 million
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Less the 20-25% that wont pay their first month's bill. We've really struggled with this topic. January payment deadlines got extended a lot so I suspect this % will actually drop some for future months. Of course, the feds could have captured payment themselves but they punted a very technical issue to insurers. They way they did it was as if Amazon had you place an order but then had you wait to get a bill from the merchant in the mail rather than paying then and there when checking out.

One of the funner things is that they are bringing down hc.gov Saturday, the last day to get a March 1st start date. Its also a day they are promoting getting young people covered. Really bad planning on their part.
 
CHDeac said:
Less the 20-25% that wont pay their first month's bill. We've really struggled with this topic. January payment deadlines got extended a lot so I suspect this % will actually drop some for future months. Of course, the feds could have captured payment themselves but they punted a very technical issue to insurers. They way they did it was as if Amazon had you place an order but then had you wait to get a bill from the merchant in the mail rather than paying then and there when checking out.

One of the funner things is that they are bringing down hc.gov Saturday, the last day to get a March 1st start date. Its also a day they are promoting getting young people covered. Really bad planning on their part.
Click to expand...

What's the reason they are bringing it down? More maintenance?
 
Another perspective on the "boom' in sign ups:

Obamacare Enrollment Rate Slows Markedly In January


7:01 AM, FEB 13, 2014 • BY JAY COST

On Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that enrollment in the Obamacare private exchanges increased by 1,146,071 in January. In December, HHS reported 1,788,000 enrollees in the month of December. That suggests a drop-off of approximately 500,000, or 29 percent. (See the chart on page 5 here for a graphical representation).


Yet this underestimates the true extent of enrollment dropoffs. The HHS reporting period for December was four weeks, beginning on 12/1 and ending on 12/28. The reporting period for January was five weeks, beginning on 12/29 and ending on 2/1. This suggests that in December, enrollments averaged 447,000 per week, compared to 229,000 in January, or a 49 percent drop-off in new enrollees.

It is clear by now that the administration will not reach the original CBO estimate of 7 million enrollees by the deadline at the end of March. The real question is: how far short will they fall? If February’s enrollment rate matches that of January, the Administration will be able to claim 916,000 more enrollees in the current reporting period, for a grand total of about 4.2 million. That is 60% of the initial CBO estimate with a month to go before the end of open enrollment. On the other hand, it is hard to tell whether matching the pace set in January is reasonable for February. Notably, Kathleen Sebelius announced on January 24 that HHS had reached 800,000 enrollees already for the month, suggesting that the rate in the final two weeks of the month was lower than the rate in the first three weeks.

One thing is for sure: the total enrollment of 3.3 million reported by HHS is an overestimate. At this point, industry insiders estimate that about 20% of people whom HHS claims are enrollees have not paid their premiums. Meanwhile, hard data from a handful of states suggests that the number of non-payees may be larger. If the insiders are right, then the real level of enrollment right now is just 2.6 million, which puts the administration at just 38 percent of the original target with two-thirds of the enrollment period now finished.
 
So 7 million by the end of March was the goal? Eesh. No way we get there (or even get close). How are the numbers shaping out for young people signing up? After the sheer numbers that seems to be an important implementation detail. Are we getting the milk cows in the system?
 
Wrangor said:
So 7 million by the end of March was the goal? Eesh. No way we get there (or even get close). How are the numbers shaping out for young people signing up? After the sheer numbers that seems to be an important implementation detail. Are we getting the milk cows in the system?
Click to expand...

I'm willing to wager the answer is no.
 
CHDeac said:
I would assume so. Just horrible timing.
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SS computers are going down for maintenance. SS is used for identification verification purposes under the ACA.

I'm not sure if this is routine maintenance done by SS the second Saturday of every month, for example, and the ACA people just never put two and two together. Or it could be a great example of how the left hand rarely knows what the right hand is doing with the federal government. Either way, the timing absolutely sucks.
 
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/02/12/obamacare-appeals-website-healthcaregov-editorials-debates/5436305/

"Nearly four years after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, you'd think most of the kinks would have been worked out. And, of course, you'd be completely wrong.

True, the website that could sign up only six customers on Oct. 1, the day it debuted, is working better. The administration said Wednesday that 1.9 million people have signed up in the federal marketplace. But vital parts of the portal still haven't even been built. One critical omission is the part that processes the appeals of people who end up with the wrong health insurance coverage or no coverage at all.

The good news is that this affects only about 22,000 people, or a little more than 1% of those who signed up on the federal website.

The bad news is that for those people, the fact that they're part of a relatively small minority only increases the likelihood that they'll endure longer delays while the system's many other problems get attention.

The Washington Post tells the story of a 27-year-old woman in West Virginia who found a policy on the exchange that cost $100 a month more than she was entitled to with a deductible that was $4,000 too high. When she sought advice from a call center, she was told to sign up and appeal later. Without an effective appeals process, she was stuck paying the high premium and waiting for bills for emergency surgery that could overwhelm her $22,000 annual salary.

For her, Obamacare is inflicting the kind of financial pain it was supposed to prevent.

After the flaw was exposed, the administration belatedly sprang into action. It now promises that the problem will be fixed "soon," and caseworkers are reaching out to try to help people.

Making big changes in health care, which accounts for 17% of the economy, was never going to be easy. The system's complexity guarantees years of fine tuning. But that does not explain why the program's administrators failed to address predictable problems, such as the immediate need for an appeals process, or the website's weakness, or the need for reliable connections to insurers..."
 
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DeacinBama said:
SS computers are going down for maintenance. SS is used for identification verification purposes under the ACA.

I'm not sure if this is routine maintenance done by SS the second Saturday of every month, for example, and the ACA people just never put two and two together. Or it could be a great example of how the left hand rarely knows what the right hand is doing with the federal government. Either way, the timing absolutely sucks.
Click to expand...


Databases being taken down for maintenance are not uncommon. Has to be done, especially if it's a SQL Server back end and Microsoft is pushing down a service pack. Happens far less often with Oracle. You just make sure you do it during the least busy time, and I'm willing to bet the SS database techs have tons of stats telling them when the best time is to take the database down for maintenance.
 
Liquid Karma said:
Databases being taken down for maintenance are not uncommon. Has to be done, especially if it's a SQL Server back end and Microsoft is pushing down a service pack. Happens far less often with Oracle. You just make sure you do it during the least busy time, and I'm willing to bet the SS database techs have tons of stats telling them when the best time is to take the database down for maintenance.
Click to expand...

Not really my point. I'm saying that either 1) this was routine, scheduled maintenance that someone on the ACA side of things could have prepared for or 2) it was ad hoc maintenance with far-reaching consequences but still plenty of forewarning. Either way, my guess is that the poor timing vis-a-vis policies starting on 1 March was entirely preventable if only some decent communication and reasoning had been used.
 
Sgt Hulka said:
Another perspective on the "boom' in sign ups:

Obamacare Enrollment Rate Slows Markedly In January


7:01 AM, FEB 13, 2014 • BY JAY COST

On Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that enrollment in the Obamacare private exchanges increased by 1,146,071 in January. In December, HHS reported 1,788,000 enrollees in the month of December. That suggests a drop-off of approximately 500,000, or 29 percent. (See the chart on page 5 here for a graphical representation).


Yet this underestimates the true extent of enrollment dropoffs. The HHS reporting period for December was four weeks, beginning on 12/1 and ending on 12/28. The reporting period for January was five weeks, beginning on 12/29 and ending on 2/1. This suggests that in December, enrollments averaged 447,000 per week, compared to 229,000 in January, or a 49 percent drop-off in new enrollees.

It is clear by now that the administration will not reach the original CBO estimate of 7 million enrollees by the deadline at the end of March. The real question is: how far short will they fall? If February’s enrollment rate matches that of January, the Administration will be able to claim 916,000 more enrollees in the current reporting period, for a grand total of about 4.2 million. That is 60% of the initial CBO estimate with a month to go before the end of open enrollment. On the other hand, it is hard to tell whether matching the pace set in January is reasonable for February. Notably, Kathleen Sebelius announced on January 24 that HHS had reached 800,000 enrollees already for the month, suggesting that the rate in the final two weeks of the month was lower than the rate in the first three weeks.

One thing is for sure: the total enrollment of 3.3 million reported by HHS is an overestimate. At this point, industry insiders estimate that about 20% of people whom HHS claims are enrollees have not paid their premiums. Meanwhile, hard data from a handful of states suggests that the number of non-payees may be larger. If the insiders are right, then the real level of enrollment right now is just 2.6 million, which puts the administration at just 38 percent of the original target with two-thirds of the enrollment period now finished.
Click to expand...

Link? I'd like to know the author's employer.
 
DeacinBama said:
Not really my point. I'm saying that either 1) this was routine, scheduled maintenance that someone on the ACA side of things could have prepared for or 2) it was ad hoc maintenance with far-reaching consequences but still plenty of forewarning. Either way, my guess is that the poor timing vis-a-vis policies starting on 1 March was entirely preventable if only some decent communication and reasoning had been used.
Click to expand...

Didn't know the SS piece, but I'm not surprised two government agencies are having communication problems. As you said, horrible planning and timing regardless.

Not you, but it is kind of hard to stand around bitching that something is broken and then bitching about attempts to fix the problem at the same time.
 
Wouldn't that depend on the soundness and timing of the attempted fixes?
 
DeacinBama said:
Not really my point. I'm saying that either 1) this was routine, scheduled maintenance that someone on the ACA side of things could have prepared for or 2) it was ad hoc maintenance with far-reaching consequences but still plenty of forewarning. Either way, my guess is that the poor timing vis-a-vis policies starting on 1 March was entirely preventable if only some decent communication and reasoning had been used.
Click to expand...

How did it fuck up your business (I assume you are a doctor)?

LK are you a DBA? Just curious
 
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