October 5-7, 2013
Oct 05 10:42 Government shutdowns, expensive health insurance premiums Oct 05 11:36 President Obama's, Sen. Reid's plan to decimate small businesses Oct 05 13:17 Wishful thinking vs. reality Oct 05 17:11 Calling Gov. Dayton, Democrats out Oct 06 00:07 Educator training Oct 06 05:49 Shuster's monthly propaganda Oct 06 09:50 Cathie Hartnett: Republicans worried Affordable Care Act will work Oct 06 12:36 Government efficiency at its finest? Oct 07 00:15 The momentum has shifted
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Government shutdowns, expensive health insurance premiums
Another day, another editorial criticizing the TEA Party for everything that's wrong with America. It's getting rather tedious to set another media outlet straight but here goes:
Democracy . In 2008 the people elected Obama to the presidency and gave his party, the Democrats, a majority in the House and Senate. Those elected representatives passed the Affordable Care Act. Last year the people re-elected Obama and retained a Democratic majority in the Senate, despite GOP promises to repeal the health care law if it gained power.
In America, elections have consequences. But that premise is undermined by the ability of an intense faction to shut down government because it won't accept a particular law.
Counterpoint: Yesterday, Breitbart.com published this post to highlight people's experiences with Healthcare.gov. Here's what they highlighted:
On Thursday, the government's official Obamacare Facebook page was riddled with people expressing sticker shock over the government's high cost premiums after struggling for hours to wade through the technical failures vexing Obamacare exchanges all across the country.
"I am so disappointed," wrote one woman. " These prices are outrageous and there are huge deductibles . No one can afford this!" The comment received 169 "likes."
"There is NO WAY I can afford it," said one commenter after using the Kaiser Subsidy Calculator. "Heck right now I couldn't afford an extra 10$ [sic] a month...and oh apparently I make to [sic] much at 8.55/hour to get subsidies."
Another person shared a link found on the federal government's main Obamacare page listing premium estimates for small business employers:
The information is not very complete as I don't see anything about deductible or other detailed info, but it does given an actual price as to the "Premium." It is VERY SCARY!! For example, my insurance plan right now for my spouse and I costs $545 a month with 100% coverage after my $2500 deductible. We are both 32 years old. When I looked at this site for 80% coverage it says it will be $954.78 a month!!!! So compare my old Plan: 100% coverage for $545 a month To New Plan: 80% Coverage for $945 a month . This is only only an estimate but it is VERY Scary for me to see this kind of increase in rates and reduction in benefits!
A single mother of two said she is in school and working full-time while living "75% below the poverty level." She said she was shocked to learn she did not qualify for a healthcare subsidy. "Are you F'ing kidding me????" she wrote on the government's Obamacare Facebook page. "Where the HELL am I supposed to get $3,000 more a year to pay for this 'bronze' health insurance plan!?!??? And I DO NOT EVEN WANT INSURANCE to begin with!! This is frightening," she wrote.
If the Kansas City Star wants to argue that Republicans should stay silent while the Affordable Care Act devastates families because "elections have consequences", then they need to pull their head out of their posterior. The Hoouse of Representatives is representing their constituents. The Constitution doesn't just give them that right. It gives them that responsibility.
Yes, President Obama was re-elected. Yes, Harry Reid is still the Senate Majority Leader. No, that doesn't mean the GOP majority in the House of Representatives are relegated to second class citizen status, especially when they're on the side of the angels substantively.
If Democrats want to go into the next election highlighting the fact that they fought tooth and nail to make health care and health insurance more expensive, so be it. Republicans should step forward and tell people that they listened to the American people. Republicans should tell people that they fought tooth and nail to help families by ignoring polling and listening to their constituents.
I'd love hearing the Kansas City Star or Sen. Reid or President Obama explain why they fought against the American people. I'd love hearing Democrats explain why defending a president's signature legislation is more important than improving the lives of the American people.
Thus far, Democrats have repeated President Obama's mantra that the Affordable Care Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama and ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court. That's all nice but it doesn't address why the Democratic Party, from President Obama on down, is dramatically increasing the cost of health care and health insurance.
These statistics don't lie. Health insurance prices purchased through the Affordable Care Act's exchanges are dramatically higher than under the previous system. Deductibles for the Affordable Care Act's bronze policies are significantly higher, too. Higher premiums and higher deductibles doesn't equal affordable health care.
That's why the TEA Party is right in telling President Obama and the Democratic Party they'll continue fighting for the American people.
I'd love hearing that fight. In fact, I triple dog dare Democrats to engage in that fight.
Posted Saturday, October 5, 2013 10:42 AM
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President Obama's, Sen. Reid's plan to decimate small businesses
States are attempting to thwart President Obama's and Sen. Reid's plan to decimate small businesses, aka the government shutdown. They're having mixed results :
The Arizona town of Tusayan, on the southern rim of the Grand Canyon, has 558 residents and 1,000 hotel rooms. And by Friday, it had $325,000 to reopen temporarily shuttered Grand Canyon National Park.
"The reason we exist is the Grand Canyon National Park. This closure is devastating," said Greg Bryan, Tusayan's mayor and the owner of a Best Western hotel. The town is offering to fund a partial reopening of the park that would allow visitors to drive through on a main road and stop at overlooks.
This week, Sen. Reid shot down the House bill that would've opened all national parks. In fact, he suggested that it was a gimmick. It isn't. It's the GOP's attempt to not hurt small businesses. Something that's undeniable is that Sen. Reid's obstructionist tactics are hurting small businesses across the nation.
In Wisconsin, officials are keeping seven federally subsidized state-owned forest, wildlife and recreation areas open, even after receiving instructions from the federal Department of the Interior to close them. The state lands depend on federal funds for 18% of their budgets, or $701,000 total.
"I really don't think it is a defiance, but fulfilling our obligations," said Cathy Stepp, an official with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, which administers the state properties. "We are doing everything we can with social media, radio outlets and news to get the word out that we're open. The calls are coming in like crazy - people are planning to come here with camping trips every year, weddings, reunions."
Wisconsin, thanks for keeping parks open rather than joining with President Obama and the Democratic Party in inflicting pain on American families.
This definitely caught my attention:
Lawmakers in Maryland have worked out a small exception to the federal shutdown to allow several hundred family members to honor firefighters who died in the line of duty at the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Emmitsburg, Md., this weekend.
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) worked with the memorial, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Fire Administration to open the site briefly for the annual memorial service.
A spokeswoman for Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, said the brief opening didn't present an additional cost. "They're just unlocking the gate and allowing families of fallen firefighters to pay their respects at the memorial," the spokeswoman said.
This is the history of the Obama administration and Democrats. They threatened to arrest World War II veterans trying to visit their memorial but they give special exemptions to Democratic allies like Steny Hoyer and Martin O'Malley.
In Arizona, the Grand Canyon State, the awe-inspiring attraction brings in millions of visitors every year and is an anchor of the state's tourism industry, which last year accounted for $19 billion in spending and 7% of tax revenue, according to a state tourism report. The attraction creates 12,000 jobs, and tourists spend $1.2 million a day on businesses there, according to Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, a Democrat who represents the district that includes the canyon, as well as seven national forests and other national parks.
Ms. Kirkpatrick said Friday she is continuing to negotiate on behalf of her district to try to reopen the Grand Canyon and other parks.
The Grand Canyon would be open if not for Sen. Reid's insistence on hurting small businesses. He'll attempt to explain away his refusal to fund the National Park Service by saying it's part of his political strategy. That's his option. Still, that doesn't exempt him from criticism that he's putting a higher priority on his political party's political posturing than he's putting on helping small businesses.
Most of the shops in and around the Grand Canyon are little mom and pop shops. Most can be run by a family. That's who Sen. Reid and President Obama are hurting. Shame on them for needlessly tormenting these shopkeepers.
Posted Saturday, October 5, 2013 11:36 AM
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Wishful thinking vs. reality
This article puts its finger on why the Affordable Care Act is likely to fail:
A recent Reuters poll found Obamacare may not attract enough young people to keep costs low for others, despite a headline that asserts the opposite: 'Poll shows healthy young adults may keep Obamacare afloat.'
The conflict between headline and data represents a collision between the hopes of survey respondents and economic logic.
The poll found that a little more than a third of young adults in its survey had tried and failed to purchase health insurance in the past. It also found that a third hoped to be able to buy health insurance now.
Reuters figured if just half of them do so, 'the White House would easily meet its goal of getting 2.7 million young adults, out of about 16 million uninsured 19-to-29-year-olds, to buy Obamacare insurance for 2014.'
Here's the flaw with Reuters' optimism:
This group couldn't afford health insurance before, and Reuters never bothers to explain how they'll afford it when it gets more expensive.
The other thing that the Obama administration isn't talking about is how the Affordable Care Act will attract the additional young people over their initial projection to subsidize the additional 50-somethings that are getting kicked off their company-supported health insurance plans.
The initial estimates didn't figure on businesses dropping their health insurance plans at the rate that they're actually dropping their health insurance plans. That likely means that the 2.7 million figure needed to float the Affordable Care Act significantly underestimates the number of young people buying health insurance.
After the glitches are straightened out, mathematical reality will hit the Obama administration. The numbers simply won't add up. It's just that simple.
Posted Saturday, October 5, 2013 1:17 PM
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Calling Gov. Dayton, Democrats out
This op-ed calls out the DFL, starting with Gov. Dayton, Sen. Bakk and Speaker Thissen, for telling whoppers about repaying the school shift. Dan Fabian's and Deb Kiel's op-ed is a shot across Gov. Dayton's bow:
So, when Gov. Mark Dayton and Democratic leaders recently declared their one-party control led to the state making good on $2.5 billion in delayed K-12 school payments, we stopped dead in our tracks, totally astonished.
Now, people who know us gather we are reasonable people. We don't like to get into partisan politics, but in this instance, we felt the need to set the record straight to what we view as one of the more egregious examples of political misrepresentation.
Rep. Fabian and Rep. Kiel won't say it this harshly but I will. Gov. Dayton, Sen. Bakk and Speaker Thissen lied through their teeth. (I first wrote about this in this post .) Here's what the DFL press release admitted:
Governor Mark Dayton, Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, House Speaker Paul Thissen, Management and Budget Commissioner Jim Schowalter, and Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius announced that Minnesota schools were repaid an additional $636 million at the end of the 2013 fiscal year.
The budget that was in place through the end of FY2013 was passed by the GOP legislature after a lengthy shutdown caused by Gov. Dayton. Credit for paying off $636,000,000 of the school shift rightly belongs to the GOP legislature, first because their budget created a healthy surplus and secondly, because the GOP legislature said no to the greedy fingers of the DFL's special interests.
Here's some verifiable facts for Gov. Dayton, Speaker Thissen and Sen. Bakk to digest:
From the previous Legislature, we inherited a $5 billion deficit, including a $2 billion school shift. A 'shift' simply means that payments to K-12 schools are delayed to a later date in order to provide a one-time savings to the state without actually reducing education appropriations.
As we wrestled to balance a historic deficit and out-of-control spending, we and our legislative colleagues called for holding the line on taxes and controlling state spending; on the other hand, Dayton called for large tax increases to fix the deficit.
During compromise negotiations, Dayton was first to float the idea of delaying school payments to an even later date. Ultimately, as part of the 2011 budget agreement with the governor, the amount owed in deferred payments to schools grew to $2.7 billion.
In other words, the DFL had little, if anything, to do with accelerating the paying off of the school shift. Rep. Thissen didn't vote for the budget Gov. Dayton grudgingly signed. Sen. Bakk didn't vote for the budget that Gov. Dayton grudgingly signed, either.
It's pretty pathetic to see 3 people attempting to take credit for something they shut down the government to prevent. That's the sad truth of this episode. Here's what the Democrats said about the GOP budget:
Hardworking Minnesotans responded well to the budget that didn't tax them, and revenues coming in to the state were consistently higher than expected. Record numbers of businesses popped up, and the unemployment rate continued to drop.
In April 2012, Dayton vetoed the Legislature's move to pay back more than $2 billion in delayed K-12 payments. With this veto, Dayton said, 'This is what I think is right for Minnesota.'
Vetoing a bill that would've paid off the vast majority of the school shift, then taking credit for paying off the school shift with the money from a budget they didn't want belongs in the theater of the absurd. It's pathetically fitting that Democrats would take credit for something they didn't want anything to do with.
By this point, the 2011 fiscally responsible budget had produced nearly $3.4 billion in cumulative budget surpluses. Of this, about $2.5 billion has been applied to the school shift, leaving only about $238 million from the 2010 DFL-led Legislature.
During the 2013 session, our DFL colleagues enacted a special provision that allowed them to use the remaining budget surplus of $636 million and put it toward the remaining school shift.
Now, Gov. Dayton and legislative leaders who decried the 2011 budget are taking credit for its benefits. We have to admit, it's a shrewd move and politically savvy. But it's not honest.
The words honesty and Democrats fit together as nicely as 'government shutdown' and 'respectful of veterans'.
Gov. Dayton and the Democratic legislature fought against paying off the school shift. Democratic legislators voted in lockstep against the GOP to repay the shift. Gov. Dayton vetoed the bill that would've paid off $2,500,000,000 of the school shift. Those are verifiable, irrefutable facts.
Gov. Dayton and the Democratic legislature should be ashamed of lying this blatantly about who paid off the school shift.
UPDATE : Sen. Nienow just emailed me this clip from this September's special session. In the video, Sen. Bakk admits that the school shift wasn't in the DFL's budget. Further, Sen. Bakk made clear that paying off the final $238,000,000 would rely on whether sufficient revenues came in. Finally, Sen. Bakk sounded anything but clear on whether there was enough money to repeal the DFL's mistake taxes, aka the B2B sales taxes on farm equipment repairs, telecommunications purchases and the warehousing services sales tax.
Posted Saturday, October 5, 2013 6:17 PM
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Educator training
This article is frightening on multiple levels. First, here's what happened that started this disaster:
Canyon High School, based in Anaheim Hills, issued an apology to 16-year-old Haley Bullwinkle, a student there, after first telling her that a T-shirt she wore to school violated its dress code policy on clothes depicting and promoting violence. The garment in question: a T-shirt with a photo of the American flag and a hunter, along with the words, 'National Rifle Association of America, Protecting America's Traditions Since 1871.'
It never occurred to the sophomore that the shirt she grabbed when she was running late for school a couple of weeks ago would land her in trouble with officials. But Bullwinkle was confronted by a security guard outside of class and told she had to change her shirt or face a suspension. She cooperated and wore a top the school provided for the duration of the day, but the incident frightened the teenager, and outraged her parents.
Simply put, Canyon High School tried to prevent Ms. Bullwinkle from exercising her First Amendment rights. At least the school apologized. Plenty of schools wouldn't have done even that much.
This is the frightening part:
Calls from Yahoo Shine to principal Kimberly Fricker and superintendent Michael Christensen weren't returned, but Fricker did apologize to the Bullwinkle family. Superintendent Christensen also released a statement saying, 'Campus staff will be trained so that an incident like this does not occur again.'
Here's a radical thought. Instead of putting the staff through training, perhaps schools should just teach the Constitution as part of each year's history class. After teaching the Constitution, it'd be appropriate to then teach students, and apparently faculty, staff and administration, about the Bill of Rights. (Students could even earn extra credit for reading the Federalist Papers.)
The class could be taught by KrisAnne Hall through a Skype connection. I'd bet she'd be willing to teach students, faculty, staff and administration about the history of the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the various state conventions and the documents that the Founding Fathers used to write the Constitution.
With that type of class being taught for an entire quarter, the chuckleheads who tried to silence Ms. Bullwinkle wouldn't need additional training because they'd know censorship is one of the worst violations of the First Amendment.
Posted Sunday, October 6, 2013 12:07 AM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 08-Oct-13 04:27 PM
Gary:
Silly question, but don't you have to teach the bill of rights in order to teach the constitution?
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Shuster's monthly propaganda
The St. Cloud Times publishes Dr. David Shuster's column the first Sunday of each month. Dr. Shuster's column is reliably a huge compilation of propaganda, aka BS. This month's column certainly didn't disappoint:
The Republican-controlled U.S. House unsuccessfully attempted to either repeal or emasculate the federal Affordable Care Act, aka 'Obamacare,' at least 40 times since it became law in 2010.
With insurance exchanges, a core provision of the ACA, initiated this month, conservative legislators redoubled efforts to damage the act by linking their attack to a government spending bill, resulting in a partial shutdown of the federal government.
The Affordable Care Act damaged itself. It's indisputable that the health insurance exchanges are deeply flawed. Systems have been crashed more than they've been up. I spoke with an IT professional yesterday who said that the problem is deeper than beefing up server farms.
Security of personal information (think social security numbers) is virtually nonexistent. At best, it's inconsistent. The federal portal's security was the subject of many headlines as being unntrustworthy.
That's before talking about the outrageous prices through the exchanges :
'There is NO WAY I can afford it,' said one commenter after using the Kaiser Subsidy Calculator. 'Heck right now I couldn't afford an extra 10$ [sic] a month: and oh apparently I make to [sic] much at 8.55/hour to get subsidies.'
Another person shared a link found on the federal government's main Obamacare page listing premium estimates for small business employers:
The information is not very complete as I don't see anything about deductible or other detailed info, but it does given an actual price as to the 'Premium.' It is VERY SCARY!! For example, my insurance plan right now for my spouse and I costs $545 a month with 100% coverage after my $2500 deductible. We are both 32 years old. When I looked at this site for 80% coverage it says it will be $954.78 a month!!!! So compare my old Plan: 100% coverage for $545 a month To New Plan: 80% Coverage for $945 a month. This is only only an estimate but it is VERY Scary for me to see this kind of increase in rates and reduction in benefits!
A single mother of two said she is in school and working full-time while living '75% below the poverty level.' She said she was shocked to learn she did not qualify for a healthcare subsidy. 'Are you F'ing kidding me????' she wrote on the government's Obamacare Facebook page. 'Where the HELL am I supposed to get $3,000 more a year to pay for this 'bronze' health insurance plan!?!??? And I DO NOT EVEN WANT INSURANCE to begin with!! This is frightening,' she wrote.
The inescapable truth is that the Affordable Care Act is a disaster. It doesn't need a few tweaks here or there. It needs a major reworking, starting with eliminating the individual and employer mandates and repealing all 21 taxes originated or increased in the Affordable Care Act.
Opponents of the ACA have a catalog of oft-repeated criticisms. These include claims the law will encourage societal dependency on government, stifle innovation with a medical device tax, wipe out employer-sponsored health insurance, compromise businesses and destroy jobs as a result of burdensome regulation, ration medical care at the bidding of 'death panels,' and tread on personal liberty by mandating that most Americans purchase health insurance.
This list is a witches brew of conjecture, hyperbole, insanity and falsehoods. What is true is that the mere size of the bill, spanning thousands of pages, renders it incomprehensible to many. Such mystery fosters unease in supporters, mistrust in skeptics.
Let's go through Dr. Shuster's list. First, the medical device tax steals money from companies. In turn, that limits the amount of money available for R & D. Next, we're already seeing major corporations dumping their employer-sponsored health insurance policies. This isn't speculation. It's irrefutable fact. Third, it's irrefutable that employers are cutting employees' hours to limit or eliminate the damage inflicted through the fines imposed by the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate. Fourth, there's no question that the Affordable Care Act limits Americans' liberty. Government telling people they must buy something against their will is limiting a person's liberty.
This isn't conjecture, hyperbole or insanity. They're irrefutable. Saying that these claims are conjecture, hyperbole or insanity doesn't make the claim accurate. This statement, however, is insanity:
Obamacare is a legislative behemoth because it caters to capitalism rather than shackling it.
To quote Andy Aplikowski, who said (I'm paraphrasing here) that free markets don't rely on the IRS to create markets via force. Saying that the Affordable Care Act "caters to capitalism" is total nonsense. If anything, it's hybrid capitalism, which isn't capitalism at all. Free market capitalism creates itself through people recognizing people's needs, then voluntarily making that product available.
The Affordable Care Act created products against the will of the people, then ordered people (notice, it didn't suggest to the people) to buy the product that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Max Baucus and other Democrats created and that President Obama signed into law. Simply put, 'capitalism' at the point of a gun isn't free market capitalism.
Dr. Shuster's monthly column is accurate by his standards, which is to say that it's filled with BS. By that standard, it's a joke.
Posted Sunday, October 6, 2013 5:49 AM
Comment 1 by Gretchen Leisen at 06-Oct-13 03:34 PM
Gary, you are getting better and better. I am going to tell all my friends to read your blog! You are spot on with this column. Thanks for all the great writing.
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 06-Oct-13 10:42 PM
Gretchen, Thanks for the compliment & thanks for spreading the word about LFR.
Shuster's columns are easy to criticize because they're target-rich environments in terms of the things he say that aren't right.
Cathie Hartnett: Republicans worried Affordable Care Act will work
This morning, DFL strategist Cathie Hartnett trotted out the Democrats' latest spin on the Affordable Care Act. "Perhaps, they're afraid it will work." Cathie's probably a nice lady. I say probably because I've never met her. Whether she's a nice lady or not, I know that she's either not too bright or she's one of the most creative spinners I've ever seen.
At this point, it's a toss-up between those options.
What isn't a coin flip decision is whether the Affordable Care Act will work. The exchanges are a mess that won't get fixed for months, if not longer. Even if they install the requisite servers, that's only part of the exchanges' problems. Their data security stinks. Without that fixed, good luck getting people to purchase health insurance.
That's before thinking about whether young people, the key to the Affordable Care Act working, are interested in purchasing health insurance. This article highlights why millennials won't purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act's exchanges:
This group couldn't afford health insurance before, and Reuters never bothers to explain how they'll afford it when it gets more expensive.
There's no question health insurance is getting more expensive:
Monthly premiums under Obamacare will go up for young people in all 50 states, according to a study released Thursday by the center-right American Action Forum. Premiums will average more than $187 per month in 2014, up from $62 per month in 2013, a 202 percent increase, the study said.
Paying triple what you would've paid for a product a month ago isn't much of an incentive. Millennials aren't excited about buying health insurance:
Several Millennials told us why they won't bother to sign up.
'An entire generation is being turned into a part-time workforce' because of Obamacare, said 22-year-old Patrick Richardson, a senior at the University of Toledo in Ohio who considers himself fortunate to have health insurance through his employer.
'When you do the math, it's cheaper to pay the penalty, but that's not the way the system was designed. It counts on young people enrolling, but young people don't want any part of it,' he said.
Several people said they would rather cough up the $95 penalty in the first year for being uninsured than pay hundreds of dollars each month in premiums for Obamacare.
'If we weren't covered on our parents' health insurance, my friends and I would pay the fine rather than pay for the higher cost of health insurance,' said Keith Leslie, a 23-year-old graduate student at Florida State University in Tallahassee still covered by his parents' health plan.
Ms. Hartnett, do those stories sound like Republicans should worry that the Affordable Care Act will work? I'm thinking it's the type of information that suggests the Democrats will get punished for voting for the Affordable Care Act next November.
Frankly, the only thing more amazing than Ms. Hartnett's statement was Brian McLung's ability to not start laughing in Ms. Hartnett's face. I don't know that I could've exercised that type of restraint.
Posted Sunday, October 6, 2013 9:50 AM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 06-Oct-13 08:44 PM
Headline on MSN local news is that more Minnesotans default on student loans and Obamacare is going to work? Is Ms. Hartnett smoking medicinal marijuana? If the people who are supposed to be footing the largest portion of the bill can't pay for their student loans, how are they going to pay for health insurance?
Obamacare isn't supposed to work, it is supposed to fail so the government can force us into single payer.
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 06-Oct-13 10:45 PM
Chad, you're right that it's designed to force us into single-payer. There's a flaw with that plan, though, & it's in the form of initials. Specifically, who'll trust a government to run health care in light of the IRS & NSA scandals?
Government efficiency at its finest?
This article should frighten people. The federal government had 3+ years to put the exchanges together. Moving cautiously and deliberately, the geniuses in charge of a major project for the federal government got things disastrously wrong:
Government officials blame the persistent glitches on an overwhelming crush of users, 8.6 million unique visitors by Friday, trying to visit the HealthCare.gov website this week.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversaw development of the site, declined to make any of its IT experts available for interviews. CGI Group Inc, the Canadian contractor that built HealthCare.gov, is "declining to comment at this time," said spokeswoman Linda Odorisio.
Five outside technology experts interviewed by Reuters, however, say they believe flaws in system architecture, not traffic alone, contributed to the problems.
For instance, when a user tries to create an account on HealthCare.gov, which serves insurance exchanges in 36 states, it prompts the computer to load an unusually large amount of files and software, overwhelming the browser, experts said. If they are right, then just bringing more servers online, as officials say they are doing, will not fix the site.
"Adding capacity sounds great until you realize that if you didn't design it right that won't help," said Bill Curtis, chief scientist at CAST, a software quality analysis firm, and director of the Consortium for IT Software Quality. "The architecture of the software may limit how much you can add on to it. I suspect they'll have to reconfigure a lot of it."
Saying that the IT 'experts' in the federal government will have to "reconfigure" the software behind the exchanges is a polite way of saying that they'll have to throw out much of what's been done. Here's why the software will need a major redesign:
One possible cause of the problems is that hitting "apply" on HealthCare.gov causes 92 separate files, plug-ins and other mammoth swarms of data to stream between the user's computer and the servers powering the government website, said Matthew Hancock, an independent expert in website design. He was able to track the files being requested through a feature in the Firefox browser.
Of the 92 he found, 56 were JavaScript files, including plug-ins that make it easier for code to work on multiple browsers (such as Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer and Google Inc's Chrome) and let users upload files to HealthCare.gov.
It is not clear why the upload function was included.
"They set up the website in such a way that too many requests to the server arrived at the same time," Hancock said. He said because so much traffic was going back and forth between the users' computers and the server hosting the government website, it was as if the system was attacking itself.
In other words, the software unleashes a torrent of instuctions for the processor to process. According to these experts, the instructions overwhelm the processing unit.
Considering the fact that the federal government worked on this important part of the Affordable Care Act for more than 3 years, why should people think the federal government is capable of running a complex health care/health insurance system? This information is stunning:
Hancock described the situation as similar to what happens when hackers conduct a distributed denial of service, or DDOS, attack on a website: they get large numbers of computers to simultaneously request information from the server that runs a website, overwhelming it and causing it to crash or otherwise stumble. "The site basically DDOS'd itself," he said.
That's stunning from the standpoint that the programmers instructed to write the software powering the exchanges wrote it to conduct its own internal hacking attack. Put another way, the programmers couldn't have screwed the software up more if that's what they were instructed to do.
Perhaps that's contributing to the pathetic enrollment figures :
After two days without any word on sign-ups, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana received some reassuring news Wednesday night: Seven people had signed up for its plan on the marketplace that day.
'The first day and second we received no submissions,' spokesman John Maginnis said. 'This being day three, we were notified through the healthcare.gov website that we had seven. So that's very good news. It's a small number, but it told us the functionality is beginning to perform as its supposed to.'
It's setting the bar pretty low when you consider 7 people signing up for health insurance over 3 days is "very good news."
To Cathie Hartnett: This is why Republicans aren't worried that the Affordable Care Act will become popular.
Posted Sunday, October 6, 2013 12:36 PM
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The momentum has shifted
I wrote here that I thought the shutdown momentum was shifting. After reading Peggy Noonan's WSJ column , I'm confident that the momentum shift is real and that Old Mo, as Don Meredith used to call it, has shifted away from President Obama and the Democrats. Here's part of Ms. Noonan's thoughts on why it's shifted:
The Democratic mistake is the punitive, crude, pain-bringing shutting down of things that everyone knows don't have to be shut down - the World War II memorial, the Iwo Jima memorial, parks, landmarks, etc. All this is part of a strategic decision to cause and ratchet up pain for normal citizens. That pain, the White House thinks, will make people hate the shutdown and therefore make them hate the Republicans who summoned it.
It is a mistake.
First, everyone knows it is the federal government that's doing it, and the chief executive officer of that government is the president. If he didn't want it to happen he could make it not happen. Every informed voter knows why the White House is doing it. Which means every informed voter knows they are being abused by the administration in order to make them hate that administration's political foes.
This video shows the administration's vindictiveness:
Kicking people out of their private homes is the epitome of petulant, vindictive behavior. There's more:
Joyce Spencer is 77-years-old and her husband Ralph is 80. They've been spending most of their time in the family ice cream store since going home isn't an option.
The Spencers never expected to be forced out of their Lake Mead home, which they've owned since the 70s, but on Thursday, a park ranger said they had 24 hours to get out.
'I had to go to town today and buy Ralph undershirts and jeans because I forgot his pants,' Joyce Spencer told Action News.
The Stewart's Point home sits on federal land, so even though the Spencers own their cabin outright, they're not allowed in until the government reopens.
This is an arbitrary choice on the government's part. The Obama administration's decision is intended to inflict pain on average Americans. The Spencers know that they should be able to live in their homes regardless of whether the government is shut down or not.
This is the type of story that Ms. Noonan is talking about. That's why 'Old Mo' has shifted. Here's more from Ms. Noonan:
The White House thought they'd cause pain with their strategy and the pain would redound on the Republicans. They have caused pain, but it looks to me very likely it will redound on themselves.
Republicans are taking a PR hit because of the shutdown. Still, shutting down the World War II Memorial, the Iwo Jima Memorial and these Lake Mead homes is something only the executive branch can do. The longer this drags on, the bigger the PR disaster this is for the Obama administration. Then there's this:
As James Baker told me last week, the president has repeated over and over, in different venues and to different audiences, including on the phone with the speaker, that he will not negotiate. At first it looked as if he was saying he wouldn't negotiate on ObamaCare. But he has allowed it to morph into a blanket statement that he won't negotiate on the debt limit.
But presidents do negotiate on the debt limit. They have to. They can't not negotiate it. And if the president keeps not negotiating, he is going to look like the man who caused a U.S. government default - an outcome of a whole other order of magnitude. He's going to look that way because he allowed himself to look that way. And the reasons for his stand look exactly like this: miscalculation, stubbornness and pride.
My dad had a saying that President Obama apparently hasn't learned. Dad used to say that "stupidity is what gets us in trouble. Pride is what keeps us there." It's time for President Obama to stop being this prideful, petulant and peevish. He's supposed to be the leader of all Americans, not just those that agree with him.
The longer President Obama acts this petulantly, the more his brand suffers, which hastens his lame duck status.
Posted Monday, October 7, 2013 12:15 AM
Comment 1 by J. Ewing at 07-Oct-13 10:18 AM
Please, please stop talking about "defaulting on the debt." Whatever else may occur, there is more than enough revenue coming into the Treasury to pay the interest and principle on our current debt, plus a lot of other things, so to talk of default is a propaganda trick called the "Big Lie." Leave that to Obama; he's had lots of practice.
Comment 2 by SWOhio at 08-Oct-13 01:57 PM
This shutdown was planned by the Dems 18 months ago to be executed at the exact time as the obamacare 'rollout' because they knew that it would either be a complete fiasco, or would make people so furious they would turn on obama - and as it happened, it has done both, and quite well, too.
Reid signed NO appropriations bills this year. If signed the shutdown would have been prevented. Reid refused to address the individual funding bills sent to him by a bipartisan House, that would fund everything that has been targeted by the obama administration.
The signs were pre-printed, pre-positioned in parks and memorials across the country, and the manpower was pre-scheduled to insure that all targets were closed sometime between midnight Monday and early morning Tuesday 1 October.
Schumer just accused Boehner of 'planning the shutdown 18 months ago'. Specifically, '18 months ago'.
Thanks, Schumer. Now we have a timeline that can be investigated. A paper trail has to exist to cover the ordering and printing of the signs, the shipment and delivery of them, and the manpower assignments.
Comment 3 by Gretchen Leisen at 09-Oct-13 09:10 PM
I love your description of President Obama as "prideful, petulant and peevish." It has great resonance. is easy to remember and attach to Obama's character.
