ObamaCare " glitches "....

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/10/14/if-you-think-the-obamacare-exchanges-and-premiums-were-bad/

If you think the ObamaCare exchanges and premiums were bad …

POSTED AT 12:01 PM ON OCTOBER 14, 2013 BY ED MORRISSEY

… then Barack Obama’s hometown newspaper has news for you. The initial shock of the premium increases and the incompetent use of $94 million [see update] to create the world’s biggest 404 exchange are just the starting shocks of ObamaCare. Wait until people have to actually start using their new insurance, and perhaps the biggest surprise of all will be waiting:

Adam Weldzius, a nurse practitioner, considers himself better informed than most when it comes to the inner workings of health insurance. But even he wasn’t prepared for the pocketbook hit he’ll face next year under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

If the 33-year-old single father wants the same level of coverage next year as what he has now with the same insurer and the same network of doctors and hospitals, his monthly premium of $233 will more than double. If he wants to keep his monthly payments in check, the Carpentersville resident is looking at an annual deductible for himself and his 7-year-old daughter of $12,700, a more than threefold increase from $3,500 today.

“I believe everybody should be able to have health insurance, but at the same time, I’m being penalized. And for what?” said Weldzius, who is not offered insurance through his employer. “For someone who’s always had insurance, who’s always taken care of myself, now I have to change my plan?”

That’s right — not only have premiums doubled in the individual markets, the coverage has gotten worse in a very concrete way. The new system has now opened a wide chasm between the employer and individual markets on actual cost coverage, too:

To promote the Oct. 1 debut of the exchanges, the online marketplaces where consumers can shop and buy insurance, Obama administration and Illinois officials touted the lower-than-expected monthly premiums that would make insurance more affordable for millions of Americans. But a Tribune analysis shows that 21 of the 22 lowest-priced plans offered on the Illinois health insurance exchange for Cook County have annual deductibles of more than $4,000 for an individual and $8,000 for family coverage.

Those deductibles, which represent the out-of-pocket money consumers must spend on health care before most insurance benefits kick in, are higher than what many consumers expected or may be able to stomach, benefit experts said.

By comparison, people who buy health insurance through their employer have an average individual deductible of just more than $1,100, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Bear in mind that Democrats claimed that the ObamaCare exchanges would make insurers treat individuals better in relation to group insurance plans. Instead, they’ve made the markets for individuals even worse than before, thanks to the deluge of costly mandates imposed on insurers, who must pass the cost of risk pools to the consumers.

The higher deductibles are the result of attempting to tamp down the premium hikes, but this raises a big question about the structure of the reform itself. If consumers end up with $4000 deductibles, how are these costs different than the alternate reform model of hospitalization insurance, health-savings accounts (HSAs), and emphasis on the cash/retail system for routine medical care? What we’ve ended up with is the same deductible costs — no one will use $4000 in routine medical care a year — without the cash-market reforms that would drive costs downward through price-signal clarity and competition, while incentivizing providers to get back into routine medical care by wiping out third-party payer red tape and costs.

Plus, we’ve now made it a crime for consumers to refuse health insurance, although many will make that choice anyway:

Millions of Americans may be wrestling with computer glitches to try to sign up for Obamacare — but many people eligible just won’t bother and will pay a price for it.

Some will flout the mandate to buy coverage on ideological grounds, a health insurance version of civil disobedience.

Some will opt for the penalty because it’s cheaper than paying for insurance, even with subsidies — as long as they don’t get sick and have to pay their own medical bills.

And some are so confused about the president’s health care law that they may not even realize they have to pay a penalty — or a tax, as the Supreme Court called it — until they get slapped with the fine when they file their 2014 tax returns. And sign-up rates may be affected, too, if the technical problems on the exchange websites persist.

If you have to pay the first $4000 out of your own pocket on insurance premiums that have doubled, why bother at all?

Update: The Blaze debunked the $634 million price tag — but at $94 million, it’s still a hugely expensive virtual brick. Thanks to Dustin Siggins for pointing this out.

Sunday, October 13, 2013 9:34 PM

Judging the Obamacare Rollout Two Weeks Later; Signups Vs. Obama's 7 Million Goal; Unprecedented Experiments

Tomorrow marks the two-week anniversary of the Obamacare rollout. Inquiring minds may be wondering how things are going. The short answer is exceptionally poorly.

Hawaii is not even up and running yet due to software glitches. On day 10, some sites reported that a mere 51,000 signups had occurred. Other places said it was double.

Either way, the number of signups is pathetic, and the White House has not released its own total, preferring to give counts of 14 million "lookie-loos" who visited the website without signing up for anything.

Signs of Trouble From the Start

Please consider the New York Times report From the Start, Signs of Trouble at Health Portal

In March, Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the Obama administration’s new online insurance marketplace, told industry executives that he was deeply worried about the Web site’s debut. “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience,” he told them.

Two weeks after the rollout, few would say his hopes were realized.

For the past 12 days, a system costing more than $400 million and billed as a one-stop click-and-go hub for citizens seeking health insurance has thwarted the efforts of millions to simply log in. The growing national outcry has deeply embarrassed the White House, which has refused to say how many people have enrolled through the federal exchange.

Even some supporters of the Affordable Care Act worry that the flaws in the system, if not quickly fixed, could threaten the fiscal health of the insurance initiative, which depends on throngs of customers to spread the risk and keep prices low.

“These are not glitches,” said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange. Like many people interviewed for this article, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not wish to alienate the federal officials with whom he works. “The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our calls, people say, ‘It’s awful, just awful.' ”

One person familiar with the system’s development said that the project was now roughly 70 percent of the way toward operating properly, but that predictions varied on when the remaining 30 percent would be done. “I’ve heard as little as two weeks or as much as a couple of months,” that person said. Others warned that the fixes themselves were creating new problems, and said that the full extent of the problems might not be known because so many consumers had been stymied at the first step in the application process.

Just a trickle of the 14.6 million people who have visited the federal exchange so far have managed to enroll in insurance plans, according to executives of major insurance companies who receive enrollment files from the government. And some of those enrollments are marred by mistakes. Insurance executives said the government had sent some enrollment files to the wrong insurer, confusing companies that have similar names but are in different states. Other files were unusable because crucial information was missing, they said.

Many users of the federal exchange were stuck at square one. A New York Times researcher, for instance, managed to register at 6 a.m. on Oct. 1. But despite more than 40 attempts over the next 11 days, she was never able to log in. Her last attempts led her to a blank screen.

Signups Vs. Obama's 7 Million Goal

Obama is hoping for 7 million signups. How many does he have? The administration refuses to disclose the number, but 10 days into the program, leaked reports showed 51,000 applicants of which just over 1,000 were actually processed.

On October 11, Media Matters reported Fox Cherry-Picks Obamacare Data To Underestimate Enrollment By More Than Half.

It would help if Obama released the actual numbers. While we are waiting, let's be generous and assume the numbers are triple or even quadruple initial estimates.

Would 200,000 be a success? Should Republicans simply have stepped back, waiting for this to implode?

Experts Warn of More Obamacare Glitches

Politico reports Tech Experts Wary of More Obamacare Glitches

The glitch-plagued Obamacare rollout might be just the beginning: A series of potential technology problems could thwart the Obama administration’s goal of getting 7 million people enrolled in the new exchanges by the end of March.

Millions of people have already encountered error messages, delays, crashes and stuck accounts. Technology experts and Obamacare backers worry that each step ahead in the process — filling out applications, checking on subsidies and selecting a health insurance plan — creates a potential technology choke point. And that doesn’t even count any additional chaos when people try to use their new health insurance come January.

“There is grave concern that many individuals who are intent on securing coverage by [Jan. 1] may not be able to do so by that date,” said consultant Dan Schuyler, who helped design a health insurance exchange in Utah and is now the senior technology expert at Leavitt Partners. “There’s a small window [the Department of Health and Human Services] has. If the problems persist another three or four weeks, those at the back of the line will not have coverage.”

Some software engineers have suggested that the consumer end of the website, designed by one contractor, is not “talking to” the back end of the website, developed by a different company.

Diagnostic tools in Web browsers have identified coding issues that may be complicating account creation. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the administration is considering an overhaul of the registration system this weekend to allow people to browse health plan options without first creating an account. The paper said the tech experts are focused on a bottleneck where a flood of data meets an Oracle software component involved in identification verification.

There’s particular worry about that tax credit calculation, which determines how much of the premium people have to pay.

“If we are already running into issues at the user account stage, we’re going to run into a lot more issues when we get to the more complex operations at the [subsidy] eligibility determination,” said Leavitt’s Schuyler. “That’s the reality. It’s a very complex process, and I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

HHS declined to comment on The Wall Street Journal report or to respond to POLITICO’s specific questions about possible problems with subsidy determinations or the enrollment transfers to insurers, two of the areas that experts pointed to as of particular concern.

Part of the problem is that signing up for Obamacare coverage is far more complicated than the online transactions Americans are used to, like checking a bank balance or ordering a book. The Obamacare website must knit together platforms from five huge federal agencies — Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration, HHS, the Treasury Department and the Department of Justice — each of which marches to its own IT specifications. It must also interact with separate systems set up by the 15 states that built their own exchanges, plus all of those outside insurers.

It’s an unprecedented experiment in federal information technology.

Fool's Mission

Requiring five distinct government agencies to integrate IT functions, on a tight time schedule, with something as complicated as Obamacare was a fool's mission from the beginning.

Unprecedented Experiment

But Obamacare is unprecedented in more ways than one. And the early prognosis looks as bad from a technological standpoint as it does from an economic standpoint.

Here's the key difference: Technology can be fixed eventually, but Obamacare itself can't.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/10/obamacare-rollout-what-the-log-in-problems-tell-us-about-more-serious-and-harder-problems-to-come.html

ObamaCare glitches.....

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2013

ObamaCare Rollout: What All the Log-In Problems Tell Us About More Serious (and Harder) Problems to Come

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Let’s dispose immediately of the administration’s canard that the Federal Exchange’s problems were caused a happy excess of visitors all trying to log in at once; I posted on my encounter with the dreaded security questions bug 38 minutes after the Exchange launched at midnight, October 1. ObamaCare wasn’t marketed like Black Friday, so if a system can’t handle the load at 22 minutes before one in the morning, it can’t handle any load and can’t even have been seriously tested. And let’s not worry about the administration’s transparent attempt to distract us with hit counts from the only metric that really matters: Sign-ups; estimates there range from ~51K at the top to 5K at the bottom; either way, not enough for Obama’s PR guys even to try to fake making Obama look good. Or for HHS to release the official figures.

Tonight, I’ll show how some of ObamaCare’s fundamental, systemic problems are slowly revealing themselves by looking at this hellish description of one
~~consumer’s~~ citizen’s log-in session (hat tip, alert reader johm). I’ll mark the spots I’m going to dig deeper like this: [0] here.) As you will see, “hellish” is not too strong a word.* Note that johm made multiple attempts, so even though HHS has been improving the system, serious flaws remain; and almost none of the systemic flaws I’m going to point out have been fixed.

I have been attempting to navigate the federal exchange since it opened on October 1st.

Initially, nothing worked. As you noted [here], [1] the security questions didn’t open.

I eventually was able to open an account. However, it was difficult to login– I kept getting an error message and was locked out after many tries.

I then attempted to change my password hoping to get back in that way. I clicked on the “forgot my password” link and was forwarded a link to click on to verify my password. The link never worked.

[2] I finally ended up creating a new account, and was successful.

Finally, I typed in my data. [3] When I got to the “verify identity” page, I got the Experian message as a pop-up. The pop-up essentially said that the exchange could not make a connection to Experian and gave me a phone number at Experian that I should call.

I eventually called Experian, and as I figured, I was put on hold and then told to call back because they were too busy. I was at my son’s house when I called and he was watching a football game giving his play by play. I told him to be quiet as I was verifying my identity with the government. Both my son and his friends gave me a big WTF?

Undeterred, I got back in to my exchange account and was told to continue inputing data. I did that.

If you have ever gone to a credit agency to get a credit report, the agency will ask you questions such as “do you have one of the following credit cards?” or “have you lived at one of the following addressed?”, etc.

[4] Apparently, the problem with verifying my identity on the exchanges was that the address I inputed, **** 6th Place Southeast, was listed with Experian as ****6th PL SE, and this caused the fail with my identity verification.

The exchange now insists that my identity be verified by either [5] mailing copies or faxing certain paper documents–driver’s license, passport, deed to the house, etc. I am, again, essentially locked out.

Sorry I didnt save a screenshot, but that’s my tale. Keep digging and you will find someone who had a similar experience to mine and did save it.

Readers, if any of you have failure stories — or success stories! — please leave them in comments. (And if you’ve got screen dumps, say so and I’ll contact you, assuming your email address is valid.)

So, to the systemic problems:

[1] The security question drop down #FAIL. I’m certainly not the only person to experience this; but as johm indicates, this frontend seems to have been fixed.

[2] Issues with multiple accounts. So johm creates one account, which doesn’t work, and then a second one, which seems to. Alas, the backend seems to be corrupting account information, so who knows which account is the right one? Bloomberg:

Each night, healthcare.gov is supposed to send a batch of new enrollments to the insurers. Called “834 files,” the data have long been an industry standard in the private sector.

The information is a new responsibility for the federal exchanges, though, according to [Dan] Schuyler, a director at Leavitt Partners, a Salt Lake City-based health-care consultant. With the government site, some of the electronic files are being transfered with missing data or are corrupted to the point where they can’t be opened, [Robert] Laszewski and Schuyler said in telephone interviews.

To fix the files, insurers have to go through them by hand. When thousands of people sign up, as the U.S. is hoping will happen before mid-December, it may create a large backup, the two consultants said.

Worse, the backend connection between account information stored on the Federal Exchanges and account information stored at the insurance companies seems to be utterly borked:

Things are worse behind the curtain than in front of it.

Here is one example from a carrier–and I have received numerous reports from many other carriers with exactly the same problem. One carrier exec told me that yesterday they got 7 transactions for 1 person – 4 enrollments and 3 cancellations.

For some reason the system is enrolling, unenrolling, enrolling again, and so forth the same person. This has been going on for a few days for many of the enrollments being sent to the health plans. It has got on to the point that the health plans worry some of these very few enrollments really don’t exist.

(Ha ha. If I were back in Philly, and these were signatures to get a candidate on the ballot instead of accounts, I’d make sure there weren’t any names like Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck in the enrollment data.)

The reconciliation system, that reconciles enrollment between the feds and the health plans, is not working and hasn’t even been tested yet.

Oh great. And we launched before that was done? Before the Federal data and the insurance data could be synched? Lordy.

The bottom line here is that even if you think you have an account and/or are enrolled, the Federal Exchange might not think either of those things. Or, worse, you may think you have one account, and the Federal Exchange might think you have another.

[3] Privatized identity verification with Experian’s data. Here, I’ll just note that the decision to privatize identity verification came from the White House.

[4] Inconsistent data at Experian. This is an utterly critical issue. Again, the poster says:

[T]he address I inputed, **** 6th Place Southeast, was listed with Experian as ****6th PL SE, and this caused the fail with my identity verification.

Of course, everybody knows that 20% of Americans have an error on their credit report, that the credit reporting agencies make it very difficult to fix them. But johm’s data wasn’t even in error; who, after all, is to say which of “6th Place Southeast” and “6th PL SE” is wrong? So it seems likely that the percentage of data from the Federal Exchange that needs to be reconciled by Experian simply because it’s inconsistent, though correct, may be a lot more than 20% of all enrollments. How many times have you written “St” for “St.” or “Street,” after all? And who knew that ObamaCare would turn into a mandate to force Experian’s
~~victims~~ subjects to clean up Experian’s data for it, when Experian won’t do that on its own?

[5] Redundant data electronically and on paper. Experian can’t reconcile the data itself, so it asks johm to send paper verification:

The exchange now insists that my identity be verified by either mailing copies or faxing certain paper documents–driver’s license, passport, deed to the house, etc. I am, again, essentially locked out.

Never mind that this is an onerous requirement, a Kafka-esque bureaucratic requirement. Because look what happens: We now have three copies of johm’s account data running around. We’ve (1) got the data johm entered on the Exchange, stored there — and for two accounts, only one of which (but which?) is valid — and (2) the copy of the data that Experian received amd stored, which may be corrupt, and may also have been changed by the Experian operator, and (3) the paper version of the data. What the system needs to do is get all three of those in synch and keep them that way. What are the odds?

Let’s also remember that all these levels of #FAIL are for what should be the simplest process of all: Logging in to get an account. We haven’t even gotten to eligibility calculation and plan selection yet. Those are more complicated.

And, oh yeah: Why in the name of The God(dess)(e)(s) Of Your Choice, If Any, did the administration make it a requirement to set up an account before comparing plans?** Buying health insurance on the exchanges was supposed to be like buying a flat screen TV, said Obama; but does Best Buy force you to set up an account before searching their home electronics section? Or Amazon? They’d be daft if they did, because they want you making a decision to purchase; customer identity can be captured at the point of sale. And the Federal Exchanges should to the same thing for the same reason.***

Of course, single payer is rugged, robust, proven, and none of this nonsense would be happen. I just can’t imagine why the Democrats when for
~~HeritageCare~~
~~RomneyCare~~ ObamaCare instead.

NOTE * I’ve received other accounts in mail similar to this one; AmericaBlog published a similar epic #FAIL here; there is, in fact, a fast-developing entire genre of ObamaCare horror stories, complete with transcripts and screen dumps (“Day 10: I turn to Kenny for help”). In an example of success, an aspiring computer engineer who’d been buying insurance for two years took an hour. Obviously, the process is nothing like buying a flat-screen TV.

NOTE ** This would make sense for a political campaign, since account information like name, email, and phone are required for fundraising and GOTV; they are the crown jewels of intellectual property for any shop. Perhaps that’s why putting registration first made sense to whoever reviewed this thing for the White House. There’s also the issue that given what we read in the papers about NSA surveillance, some of us might think it’s a very good idea to give the Feds as little information about anything as possible. For myself, I’d far rather compare products anonymously (or as anonymously as possible), and then check in only for purchase, just like at Amazon.

NOTE *** A change request to run the Marketplace more like a store — shopping first, identity after plan selection — wouldn’t be the end of the world; but it’s real work for an already overtaxed project team.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/politics/from-the-start-signs-of-trouble-at-health-portal.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all

From the Start, Signs of Trouble at Health Portal

By ROBERT PEAR, SHARON LaFRANIERE and IAN AUSTEN.

Published: October 12, 2013 203 Comments

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WASHINGTON — In March, Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the Obama administration’s new online insurance marketplace, told industry executives that he was deeply worried about the Web site’s debut. “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience,” he told them.

Enlarge This Image

Joe Skipper/Reuters

"So much testing of the new system was so far behind schedule, I was not confident it would work well."
—RICHARD S. FOSTER, who retired as chief actuary of the Medicare program in January

Multimedia

Graphic

How the Federal Exchange Is Supposed to Work, and How It Didn’t

GRAPHIC: Tracking the Progress of the Health Exchanges

Health Act Embraced in California(October 11, 2013)
In Florida, Opposition by the State and Snags in Signing Up on the Web (October 11, 2013)
Health Exchange Delays Tied to Software Crash in Early Rush(October 8, 2013)

Readers’ Comments

Share your thoughts.

Two weeks after the rollout, few would say his hopes were realized.

For the past 12 days, a system costing more than $400 million and billed as a one-stop click-and-go hub for citizens seeking health insurance has thwarted the efforts of millions to simply log in. The growing national outcry has deeply embarrassed the White House, which has refused to say how many people have enrolled through the federal exchange.

Even some supporters of the Affordable Care Act worry that the flaws in the system, if not quickly fixed, could threaten the fiscal health of the insurance initiative, which depends on throngs of customers to spread the risk and keep prices low.

“These are not glitches,” said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange. Like many people interviewed for this article, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not wish to alienate the federal officials with whom he works. “The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our calls, people say, ‘It’s awful, just awful.’ ”

Interviews with two dozen contractors, current and former government officials, insurance executives and consumer advocates, as well as an examination of confidential administration documents, point to a series of missteps — financial, technical and managerial — that led to the troubles.

Politics made things worse. To avoid giving ammunition to Republicans opposed to the project, the administration put off issuing several major rules until after last November’s elections. The Republican-controlled House blocked funds. More than 30 states refused to set up their own exchanges, requiring the federal government to vastly expand its project in unexpected ways.

The stakes rose even higher when Congressional opponents forced a government shutdown in the latest fight over the health care law, which will require most Americans to have health insurance. Administration officials dug in their heels, repeatedly insisting that the project was on track despite evidence to the contrary.

Dr. Donald M. Berwick, the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2010 and 2011, said the time and budgetary pressures were a constant worry. “The staff was heroic and dedicated, but we did not have enough money, and we all knew that,” he said in an interview on Friday.

Administration officials have said there is plenty of time to resolve the problems before the mid-December deadline to sign up for coverage that begins Jan. 1 and the March 31 deadline for coverage that starts later. A round-the-clock effort is under way, with the government leaning more heavily on the major contractors, including the United States subsidiary of the Montreal-based CGI Group and Booz Allen Hamilton.

One person familiar with the system’s development said that the project was now roughly 70 percent of the way toward operating properly, but that predictions varied on when the remaining 30 percent would be done. “I’ve heard as little as two weeks or as much as a couple of months,” that person said. Others warned that the fixes themselves were creating new problems, and said that the full extent of the problems might not be known because so many consumers had been stymied at the first step in the application process.

Confidential progress reports from the Health and Human Services Department show that senior officials repeatedly expressed doubts that the computer systems for the federal exchange would be ready on time, blaming delayed regulations, a lack of resources and other factors.

Deadline after deadline was missed. The biggest contractor, CGI Federal, was awarded its $94 million contract in December 2011. But the government was so slow in issuing specifications that the firm did not start writing software code until this spring, according to people familiar with the process. As late as the last week of September, officials were still changing features of the Web site, HealthCare.gov, and debating whether consumers should be required to register and create password-protected accounts before they could shop for health plans.

One highly unusual decision, reached early in the project, proved critical: the Medicare and Medicaid agency assumed the role of project quarterback, responsible for making sure each separately designed database and piece of software worked with the others, instead of assigning that task to a lead contractor.

Some people intimately involved in the project seriously doubted that the agency had the in-house capability to handle such a mammoth technical task of software engineering while simultaneously supervising 55 contractors. An internal government progress report in September 2011 identified a lack of employees “to manage the multiple activities and contractors happening concurrently” as a “major risk” to the whole project.

While some branches of the military have large software engineering departments capable of acting as the so-called system integrator, often on medium-size weapons projects, the rest of the federal government typically does not, said Stan Soloway, the president and chief executive of the Professional Services Council, which represents 350 government contractors. CGI officials have publicly said that while their company created the system’s overall software framework, the Medicare and Medicaid agency was responsible for integrating and testing all the combined components.

By early this year, people inside and outside the federal bureaucracy were raising red flags. “We foresee a train wreck,” an insurance executive working on information technology said in a February interview. “We don’t have the I.T. specifications. The level of angst in health plans is growing by leaps and bounds. The political people in the administration do not understand how far behind they are.”

The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, warned in June that many challenges had to be overcome before the Oct. 1 rollout.

“So much testing of the new system was so far behind schedule, I was not confident it would work well,” Richard S. Foster, who retired in January as chief actuary of the Medicare program, said in an interview last week.

But Mr. Chao’s superiors at the Department of Health and Human Services told him, in effect, that failure was not an option, according to people who have spoken with him. Nor was rolling out the system in stages or on a smaller scale, as companies like Google typically do so that problems can more easily and quietly be fixed. Former government officials say the White House, which was calling the shots, feared that any backtracking would further embolden Republican critics who were trying to repeal the health care law.

Marilyn B. Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, both insisted in July that the project was not in trouble. Last month, Gary M. Cohen, the federal official in charge of health insurance exchanges, promised federal legislators that on Oct. 1, “consumers will be able to go online, they’ll be able to get a determination of what tax subsidies they are eligible for, they’ll be able to see the premium net of subsidy,” and they will be able to sign up.

But just a trickle of the 14.6 million people who have visited the federal exchange so far have managed to enroll in insurance plans, according to executives of major insurance companies who receive enrollment files from the government. And some of those enrollments are marred by mistakes. Insurance executives said the government had sent some enrollment files to the wrong insurer, confusing companies that have similar names but are in different states. Other files were unusable because crucial information was missing, they said.

Many users of the federal exchange were stuck at square one. A New York Times researcher, for instance, managed to register at 6 a.m. on Oct. 1. But despite more than 40 attempts over the next 11 days, she was never able to log in. Her last attempts led her to a blank screen.

Neither Ms. Tavenner nor other agency officials would answer questions about the exchange or its performance last week.

Worried about their reputations, contractors are now publicly distancing themselves from the troubled parts of the federally run project. Eric Gundersen, the president of Development Seed, emphasized that his company had built the home page of HealthCare.gov but had nothing to do with what happened after a user hit the “Apply Now” button.

Senior executives at Oracle, a subcontractor based in California that provided identity management software used in the registration process that has frustrated so many users, defended the company’s work. “Our software is running properly,” said Deborah Hellinger, Oracle’s vice president for corporate communications. The identical software has been widely used in complex systems, she said.

The serious technical problems threaten to obscure what some see as a nationwide demonstration of a desire for more affordable health insurance. The government has been heavily promoting the HeathCare.gov site as the best source of information on health insurance. An August government e-mail said: “35 days to open enrollment.” A September e-mail followed: “5 days to open enrollment. Don’t wait another minute.”

The response was huge. Insurance companies report much higher traffic on their Web sites and many more callers to their phone lines than predicted.

That made the flawed opening all the more disappointing to supporters of the health plan, including Timothy S. Jost, a law professor and a consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

“Even if a fix happens quickly, I remain very disappointed that the Department of Health and Human Services was not better prepared for the rollout,” he said.

ObamaCare’s serious complications

States warn of 'bad actors' in exchanges...

Patients Pay Before Seeing Doctor as Deductibles Spread...

Hospitals cut thousands of jobs...

EBT " Glitches " , both of them ....

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-14/shopper-stampede-ensues-when-foodstamp-glitch-removes-walmart-spending-limits

Walmart Shopping Stampede Ensues When Foodstamp Glitch Removes EBT Spending Limits

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/14/2013 14:13 -0400

On Saturday, tens of millions of Americans across 17 states found themselves in an unfamiliar situation: they couldn't rely on the US government for their daily foodstamp-funded bread. The result was anger, confusion and sometimes, outright panic, as shoppers left their full shopping carts in stores, and departed their favorite general retailer in a daze. However, while most outlets that accepted EBT were experiencing a one-day, non-recurring hit to their EPS, several Walmart stores in Louisiana decided to brave through the Xerox-induced blackout for several hours by eliminating the spending caps on EBT cards, leading to nothing short of shopping stampedes. The result, as CBS reports, is that "Walmart and local police in Springhill and Mansfield ... were called into the stores to help maintain order Saturday as shoppers swept through the aisles at two stores and bought as much as they could carry."

CBS explains:

Walmart workers phoned their corporate headquarters to ask how they should handle all the shoppers with unlimited, government-funded spending limits, and were told to keep the registers ringing.

"We did make the decision to continue to accept EBT cards during the outage so that they could get food for their families," Walmart representative Kayla Whaling told KSLA. She added that Walmart was, "fully engaged and monitoring the situation and transactions during the outage."

Shoppers gave mixed reactions to the incident, with one man in the Springhill store told KSLA it was simply "human reaction" to stock-up when given the opportunity. Shopper Stan Garcia was more critical of the unscrupulous shoppers, however, saying that taking advantage of the brief glitch in the benefits system amounted to "plain theft. That's stealing, that's all I got to say about it."

The police disagreed:

Police spokesmen in both locations told KSLA that no arrests were made during the spending sprees.

After all, why arrest when all the public is doing is taking advantage of government generosity taken to its logical extreme: unlimited spending cards funding by either other taxpayers or America's creditors, the largest of which is now the Federal Reserve. Isn't that what the Fed enables Congress to do on a daily basis anyway?

Naturally, once the glitch was fixed, the stampede quickly ended:

Amateur video taken on shoppers' cell phones shows dozens of shopping carts, piled high with merchandise,abandoned in the aisles of one Walmart after the announcement was made that EBT cards were once again showing accurate spending limits.

There's that. Or perhaps it was all just a test run for what will happen when the Fed finally waves a white flag, and gives every American an unlimited-spending debt card in a desperate last-ditch effort to finally enact Bernanke's monetary helicopter paradrop wet dream.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-13/america-fumes-after-xerox-routine-backup-test-leave-17-states-without-foodstamps-sat

America Fumes After Xerox "Routine Backup Test" Leave 17 States Without Foodstamps

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/13/2013 10:09 -0400

Black Swan

Yesterday millions of "shoppers" living on the government dole left their shopping carts in droves in checkout counters, exited countless foodstamp-accepting stores, and made Wal-Marts and other general merchandise stores into veritable ghost towns, after a power outage at Xerox Corp, made EBT usage in 17 states for most of Saturday impossible, and left tens of millions of poverty-level Americans unable to engage in one of their favorite pastimes: shop with other people's money. In short: the Welfare States of America were probably closer to a state of outright revolution than at any time before in history. And had the EBT stoppage continues into today and tomorrow, things would have certainly spilled out from the shopping aisle to main streets where the people's anger may have culminated in an violent expression of disgust at a state which gives with one hand and a xerox company that takes with the other.

AP Reports:

People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves temporarily unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday, after a routine test of backup systems by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure.Xerox announced late in the evening that access has been restored for users in the 17 states affected by the outage, hours after the first problems were reported.

"Restarting the EBT system required time to ensure service was back at full functionality," spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer said in an email. An emergency voucher process was available in some of the areas while the problems were occurring, she said.

U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage was not related to the government shutdown.

Ok, so the EBT failure not related to a government shutdown. It was, however, related to a simple "glitch" in a "Just-In-Time" world of peak complexity, which quickly cascaded through the logistical supply chain, and crippled the "purchasing" power of tens of millions of Americans, which potentially could have resulted in lethal consequences.

This was precisely the topic of our recent post "From Cascading Complexity To Systemic Collapse: A Walk Thru "Society's Equivalent Of A Heart Attack" which many read but few seem to have grasped. Recall from the article: "The extent of our contemporary complex global system dependencies, and our habituation to a long period of broadly stable economic and complexity growth means a systemic collapse would present profound and existential challenges." Such as resulting from a power outage at... Xerox Corp? If there is any better example of a system crossing the chaotic threshold due to a black swan event, we have yet to find it.

And while this time it took just 12 hours to return the system to order, what would have happened if the failure states had propagated, and led to subsequent systemic failures on their own, halting down peripheral social choke points, and resulting in a freeze of the "backup and restore" capacity of society. In short: this time, we - and especially those 46 million Americans on foodstamps - were lucky. Next time, luck may be in short supply.

Foodstamp Nation In Turmoil: EBT System Goes Dark, "Glitch" Blamed

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/12/2013 17:03 -0400

In the past five years it has become apparent that America can survive a near-fatal financial system collapse, an economy teetering on the edge and kept ticking only thanks to the Fed's now perpetual QE, a collapsing standard of living for everyone but the wealthiest 0.1%, declining wages, zero interest rates, surging food, energy, rent, tuition and welfare costs, and pretty much everything else, as long as the welfare state keeps humming along. Any be welfare state we mostly mean providing the daily bread to the nearly 50 million Americans living in poverty and surviving only thanks to the only thing to have exploded to epic record highs under Obama (in addition to the Fed's balance sheet of course):foodstamp usage. However, the true stability of the US may be tested very soon following reports that due to a "possible computer glitch" the Electronic Benefits Transfer System, aka EBT, ala Foodstamps, is offline. Cue mass panic among the best-weaponized population in the world. Naturally, this latest fiasco involving a country that has grown accustomed to sucking on the government's teat was immediately blamed on a "glitch" - just like everything else that is slowly but surely breaking in the New Normal.

CBS reports:

Reports from around the country began pouring in around 9 a.m. on Saturday that customers’ EBT cards were not working in stores. The glitch, however, did not appear to be part of the government shutdown. At 2 p.m., an EBT customer service representative told CBS Boston that the system was currently down for a computer system upgrade.

The representative said the glitch is affecting people nationwide.She could not say when officials expected the system to be restored.

People calling the customer service line were being told to call back later.

State officials said they were preparing a statement to further explain the issue.

The federal EBT website was unavailable due to the government shutdown.

AP adds:

People in Ohio, Michigan and several other states found themselves unable to use their food stamp debit cards on Saturday, after a routine check by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure. Shoppers from Maine to Oklahoma had to abandon baskets of groceries because they couldn't access their benefits.

Ohio's cash and food assistance card payment systems went down at 11 a.m., said Benjamin Johnson, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Ohio's cash system has been fixed, however its electronic benefits transfer card system is still down. All states that use Xerox systems are affected by the outage.

Xerox spokeswoman Karen Arena confirmed via email Saturday afternoon that some EBT systems are experiencing temporary connectivity issues. She said technical staff is addressing the issue and expects the system to be restored soon.

As a reminder, this is how many Americans and households were on foodstamps as of the most recent monthly update (hint: a record).

And now, it's time for the sequel to @MrEBT's hit masterpiece: "My EBT... has been rejected."

Xerox Statement on Temporary EBT Systems Outage

During a routine test of our back-up systems Saturday morning, Xerox’s Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system experienced a temporary shutdown. While the system is now up and running, beneficiaries in the 17 affected states continue to experience connectivity issues to access their benefits. This disruption impacts EBT beneficiaries who rely on the system for SNAP and WIC. Technical staff is addressing the issue and expect the system to be restored soon. Beneficiaries requiring access to their benefits can work with their local retailers who can activate an emergency voucher system where available. We appreciate our clients’ patience while we work through this outage as quickly as possible.

In short: Cue panic, because while the Nasdaq may be down for 3 hours and only a few vacuum tubes would notice, take down EBT, and you will have a full-fledged revolution in no time.

Catharsis Ours

Sunday, October 13, 2013

ObamaCare rollout "glitches " and Saturday's EBT " glitch " - beginning of a pattern of technological epic fails ? When do we see " glitches affecting electrical grids ?