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If the ObamaCare contractor brought on last week to fix the back-end of the HealthCare.gov portal doesn’t finish the build-out by mid-March the healthcare law will be jeopardized, according to a procurement document posted on a federal website.

It says insurers could be bankrupt and the entire healthcare industry threatened if the build out is not completed.

The procurement document signed by healthcare officials in late December says that the government determined in mid-December that CGI Federal, the contractor originally tasked with connecting the online healthcare portal to insurers, is not up to the task.

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) announced last week it was firing CGI Federal, and bringing on Accenture to finish the website.

The document says officials realized in December that the need to bring on Accenture is so urgent that there is no time to go through the “full and open competition process” before awarding them with a $91 million contract.

“There is limited time to build this functionality and failure to deliver…by mid-March 2014 will result in financial harm to the government,” the document says.

“If this functionality is not complete by mid-March 2014, the government could make erroneous payments to providers and insurers,” it continues. “Additionally, without a Financial Management platform that accounts for enrollments and associated program costs that integrates with the existing CMS Accounting platform, the entire healthcare reform program is jeopardized.”

Many of those who have signed up for ObamaCare are eligible for federal subsidies, which the government pays directly to the insurers. The document says that failure to complete the project by mid-March can result in “inaccurate issuance of payments to health plans which could seriously put them at financial risk; potentially leading to their default and disrupting continued services and coverage to consumers.”

Chet Burrell, president and chief executive officer of the Maryland-based CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, has encouraged Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) to ignore calls for the state to abandon all or part of its health exchange and switch to the federal exchange, according to a letter Burrell sent Friday that was obtained by The Washington Post. Here’s the full text of that message:

Governor,

As a follow on to our recent communication, I just want to say that, while I know your frustrations with Maryland’s efforts on the Exchange have been great, a move to the Federal Exchange at this time would present substantial new risks and costs. Indeed, it may go so further complicate an already complicated situation as to make any near term remedy virtually unattainable.

We are dealing directly with the Federal Exchange in Virginia and have extensive day to day experience with it. We find that there are many serious and persistent operating and technical issues that undermine effective enrollment. Missing functionality limits the ability to do basic things such as correct and maintain life event changes for people once they are enrolled. We are concerned about the confusion, poor service and anger this will produce.

All things considered, my strong advice would be that the State stay its course and fix as much as it can with its own Exchange during this current open enrollment period. While far from perfect, I believe this is the most stable and effective course and is mostly likely to lead to the enrollment of the greatest number of people possible which I know to be your interest. It also greatly facilitates our efforts to support you since we are very familiar with the work that is being done by the Maryland Exchange and with the processes and technology that underpin it (however flawed).

Once the current open enrollment period is complete and there is time to assess the lay of the land, we would be happy to advise, should you desire, on what future course of action might be in the best interest of the State of Maryland.

Chet

Turdacious wrote:

If the ObamaCare contractor brought on last week to fix the back-end of the HealthCare.gov portal doesn’t finish the build-out by mid-March the healthcare law will be jeopardized, according to a procurement document posted on a federal website.

It says insurers could be bankrupt and the entire healthcare industry threatened if the build out is not completed.

The procurement document signed by healthcare officials in late December says that the government determined in mid-December that CGI Federal, the contractor originally tasked with connecting the online healthcare portal to insurers, is not up to the task.

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) announced last week it was firing CGI Federal, and bringing on Accenture to finish the website.

The document says officials realized in December that the need to bring on Accenture is so urgent that there is no time to go through the “full and open competition process” before awarding them with a $91 million contract.

“There is limited time to build this functionality and failure to deliver…by mid-March 2014 will result in financial harm to the government,” the document says.

“If this functionality is not complete by mid-March 2014, the government could make erroneous payments to providers and insurers,” it continues. “Additionally, without a Financial Management platform that accounts for enrollments and associated program costs that integrates with the existing CMS Accounting platform, the entire healthcare reform program is jeopardized.”

Many of those who have signed up for ObamaCare are eligible for federal subsidies, which the government pays directly to the insurers. The document says that failure to complete the project by mid-March can result in “inaccurate issuance of payments to health plans which could seriously put them at financial risk; potentially leading to their default and disrupting continued services and coverage to consumers.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/he ... -faces-mid

baffled wrote:

Turdacious wrote:

If the ObamaCare contractor brought on last week to fix the back-end of the HealthCare.gov portal doesn’t finish the build-out by mid-March the healthcare law will be jeopardized, according to a procurement document posted on a federal website.

It says insurers could be bankrupt and the entire healthcare industry threatened if the build out is not completed.

The procurement document signed by healthcare officials in late December says that the government determined in mid-December that CGI Federal, the contractor originally tasked with connecting the online healthcare portal to insurers, is not up to the task.

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) announced last week it was firing CGI Federal, and bringing on Accenture to finish the website.

The document says officials realized in December that the need to bring on Accenture is so urgent that there is no time to go through the “full and open competition process” before awarding them with a $91 million contract.

“There is limited time to build this functionality and failure to deliver…by mid-March 2014 will result in financial harm to the government,” the document says.

“If this functionality is not complete by mid-March 2014, the government could make erroneous payments to providers and insurers,” it continues. “Additionally, without a Financial Management platform that accounts for enrollments and associated program costs that integrates with the existing CMS Accounting platform, the entire healthcare reform program is jeopardized.”

Many of those who have signed up for ObamaCare are eligible for federal subsidies, which the government pays directly to the insurers. The document says that failure to complete the project by mid-March can result in “inaccurate issuance of payments to health plans which could seriously put them at financial risk; potentially leading to their default and disrupting continued services and coverage to consumers.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/he ... -faces-mid

If it didn't already, this whole fiasco has gone full retard.

Ninety-six percent of Bronze plans in the Small Business Health Options (SHOP) Exchange had deductibles over the $2,000 cap set by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA; P.L. 111-148), according to a study by HealthPocket.

When examining deductibles for families, similar results were found with respect to the percentage of plans that exceeded the $4,000 family deductible cap.

Strictly enforcing the deductible caps for small group health plans could have substantially narrowed the inventory of health plans in the SHOP Exchange, according to the study. For the Bronze tier in particular, fewer than 4 percent of 2014 plans would have satisfied the ACA’s deductible caps for individual as well as family enrollees.

Much has been made of the burdens of the Affordable Care Act on healthy young men, but young women are the ones most likely to see the law push them out of full-time work.

Among the uninsured – a key group for outreach under the law – unfavorable views now outnumber favorable views by roughly a 2-to-1 margin (47 percent versus 24 percent). This is a change from last month when 43 percent of the uninsured had an unfavorable view and 36 percent were favorable. More of those without coverage say the law has made the uninsured as a group worse off (39 percent) than better off (26 percent). Despite these views, large shares of the uninsured see health insurance as “very important” and say they need it, while four in ten say they’ve tried to get coverage in the past 6 months, and half expect to get it this year.

Employers need to establish a measurement period for determining each ongoing employee’s average hours per week. The period cannot be less than three months or more than 12 months. An administrative period of no more than 90 days can follow to give the employer time to figure out who will and won’t receive coverage during an upcoming “stability” period, and to get employees enrolled or notified of upcoming disenrollment.

The stability period must be at least as long as the measurement period but no less than six months. During the stability period, the IRS assesses A and B penalties, in both cases treating workers as either full-time or part-time as had been established during the measurement period.

Employers are under a tight time frame to find technology and administrative solutions for tracking employee hours. Those planning to use a 12-month measurement period and 12-month stability period for testing employee eligibility effective January 1, 2015, needed to have begun tracking hours in the fall of 2013. To comply with the rules, employers that haven’t been tracking employee hours will have to look back at prior payroll records to populate a compliance system or tool retroactively, and those tools will need to be fully operational by the fall of 2014. That process will occur every year.

This doesn't seem like it will be difficult for small employers to comply with at all...

milosz wrote:

This doesn't seem like it will be difficult for small employers to comply with at all...

Actual 'small' employers don't have to.

Batboy2/75 wrote:

milosz wrote:

This doesn't seem like it will be difficult for small employers to comply with at all...

Actual 'small' employers don't have to.

define small employers.

as currently defined by the federal government, the definition of a small business is one that has fewer than 500 employees and makes up to $1 million a year in revenue

The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council loosely groups businesses into three tiers by number of employees: Fewer than 100 is considered small, a midsized business is 100 to 500, and a company with more than 500 is large...

Using the sole qualification of less than 500 employees as the definition of a small business, over 99 percent of U.S. businesses are small.

lasalle wrote:

Batboy2/75 wrote:

milosz wrote:

This doesn't seem like it will be difficult for small employers to comply with at all...

Actual 'small' employers don't have to.

define small employers.

<50

baffled wrote:Of course health insurance is important. Too bad the type of affordable, catastrophic coverage plans that were available up until the last year are illegal now.

Hidden under the cloak of expanding health insurance, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has fostered a massive subsidization of healthcare goods and services. These subsidies often have little or anything to do with what economists would consider the “insurance” part of health insurance – providing protection against financial catastrophe. Perhaps more troubling, if the past is prologue these subsidies will continue to grow, transferring huge amounts of money to politically favored groups and doing very little to decrease aggregate health spending – a presumed goal of health reform.

The President has said that his second administration is all about creating jobs. What we didn’t realize that he must have been referring to creating lobbying jobs for healthcare interest groups.

Pinky wrote:

baffled wrote:Of course health insurance is important. Too bad the type of affordable, catastrophic coverage plans that were available up until the last year are illegal now.

Someone clearly doesn't understand what "real" insurance is.

Dranove and Garthwaite explain why that someone is Kathleen Sebelius.

Hidden under the cloak of expanding health insurance, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has fostered a massive subsidization of healthcare goods and services. These subsidies often have little or anything to do with what economists would consider the “insurance” part of health insurance – providing protection against financial catastrophe. Perhaps more troubling, if the past is prologue these subsidies will continue to grow, transferring huge amounts of money to politically favored groups and doing very little to decrease aggregate health spending – a presumed goal of health reform.

The President has said that his second administration is all about creating jobs. What we didn’t realize that he must have been referring to creating lobbying jobs for healthcare interest groups.

Between the material I quoted you will find an excellent discussion of what insurance is, and what it isn't.

Turdacious wrote:And it seems that the administration's perspective was that doing what the authors suggest (increasing deductibles to make health insurance more catastrophic risk insurance than it was prior to the PPACA) would control growth of health insurance spending.

Pinky wrote:As for your post about what insurance does, you're being silly. Outside of estate planning, insurance deals with unlikely events.

In their blanket criticisms, Congressional Republicans have often failed to grasp that if you distill the ACA down to its most basic elements, perhaps its most important feature is the introduction of competition in private health insurance through the creation of exchanges. This is, at its core, a Republican idea, and unfettered by additional regulations, could lead to real innovation and cost savings.

nafod wrote:

Pinky wrote:As for your post about what insurance does, you're being silly. Outside of estate planning, insurance deals with unlikely events.

Well then, what is unlikely about their future?

Pinky wrote:

nafod wrote:

Pinky wrote:As for your post about what insurance does, you're being silly. Outside of estate planning, insurance deals with unlikely events.

Well then, what is unlikely about their future?

None of us have health insurance. We have health payment plans, and those plans subsidize unhealthy behavior.