In response to Glitch: Some Obamacare Enrollees Not Really Enrolled:
Just when you think ObamaCare couldn’t get any worse, news like this comes along. For the love of God, this Administration is actually going to send tens of thousands of people into doctors’ offices and emergency rooms next year thinking they have valid coverage when they don’t. And since the law requires prompt payment of the first premium, they’ll have open-and-shut fraud lawsuits ready to go against the insurance companies and federal government.
At which point things will get real interesting real fast, because one of the many reasons the feddle gummint should never be trusted with control of any industry is that you can’t really sue them for fraud, not the way you could discipline a private concern. But if they follow the normal fascist pattern of blaming everything on their Little Partners in the private sector – an extremely difficult bit of creative finger-pointing, since everyone knows the problem is crap data coming from Obama’s junk website – the companies will get sued into bankruptcy, and it’s bye-bye ObamaCare.
We’re talking about a lot of people here. I’ve heard upward of a third of the enrollments processed so far are corrupt. Granted that we all know the 100,000+ enrollment figure bandied about by the Administration is a ridiculous lie, but I’ll bet the actual figure is maybe a third that much, once the Medicaid referrals and half-baked shopping cart data muffins are factored out. And since the problem is nowhere near fixed, it’s going to get worse as more people squeak past the still-malfunctioning front end. It will probably get worse faster than insurance companies can manually contact people to correct invalid enrollment data, assuming they even have accurate contact information. I’ve heard speculation that Health and Human Services will have to bite the bullet, sometime in the next two weeks, and make a public announcement that everyone who has purchased an ObamaCare policy should contact their insurance provider to make sure their coverage is valid. How on Earth can anyone justify continuing this Affordable Care Act farce after that?
Assuming Congress doesn’t do the right thing and pass a repeal bill, fast, what will probably happen in January is the Administration instructing / pleading with / threatening doctors into treating all insurance claims as valid until proven otherwise. And that will unleash a tidal wave of fraud, not to mention all kinds of hijinks from hackers slipping into the sloppy, easily-penetrated Healthcare.gov system. I don’t mean this as hyperbole: everyone who has created an account at Healthcare.gov needs to change every password and personal data entry they have, right now. Assume everything tied to their Social Security Numbers has been compromised. I’d recommend the mother of all virus and malware scans if you’ve even touched the Healthcare.gov website with your computer.
The other ramification of the garbage data flowing to insurance providers is financial. We know the system that’s supposed to pay them subsidies doesn’t even exist yet. The Administration tried to blow that off as no big deal, but insurance providers are stating to wonder out loud how they’re supposed to survive if they don’t get paid. The “death spiral” will become even more pronounced if providers are obliged to pay out fishy claims, they have trouble collecting premiums for policies created incorrectly by Healthcare.gov, and they’re not getting their taxpayer subsidy money yet.
A lot of those high-premium ObamaCare plans currently rocking the world with “sticker shock” are really supposed to be pipelines from taxpayer wallets into the insurance companies, because huge subsidies are meant to defray much of the cost to consumers (who then get soaked by the astronomical deductibles typical of these lousy Affordable Care Act policies.) If the back end of the system isn’t working, that pipeline will be closed, and it’s hard to imagine anything short of a wholesale raid on the Treasury that could keep the system floating.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.