November 12, 2013

At your Afternoon Dog Café...

Missy

... everything is perfect in the last of today's light.

7 comments:

mulefly said...

I'm not sure who is more "dog oriented" you guys or Dana from The Five

Hagar said...

How about the insurance companies in this mess? They can't deal with this any better than the government and its IT consultants as this thing unravels, and they must surely sustain losses in the mega billions.

OK, so it could not happen to more deserving people, but 1. we still need medical insurance from somebody, and 2. what other financial institutions go down with them?

Again, boohoo, but that is going to our neighborhood banks and us civilians too.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

What a mug.

Henry said...

Hagar, take a read of this:

Insurance companies, which have been pressing the White House for greater ability to sign up customers directly, are stuck at the moment, unable to complete enrollments. That is because they must connect with the federal online system to determine whether customers’ incomes qualify them for tax credits to help pay for their insurance — a part of the system that does not work.

According to the official, workers are trying to streamline the computer system so that it can handle outside queries from insurers and the call centers about whether people are eligible for subsidies. Technical workers are striving to have this part of the system working reliably within two to three weeks.


My emphasis. The bottleneck is the part assigned to the Federal government. The highest priority fix is to get the insurance companies in the loop. Citizens come second.

Hagar said...

The old-fashioned socialists and communists - wrongheaded as they were - could gain a lot of support from "the masses" because they did have some understanding and feel for people and how they work.

I think today's "gentry socialists" (that is pretty much what "progressives" are) lack this empathy, and that is what lies under their massive failure in attempting to take over the healthcare industry through the back door through the AHCA. It is not only that the technical features don't work because these people have no understanding of technical matters either, but the basic thing is their failure to understand that people just plain don't want this kind of thing.

Hagar said...

O'Reilly said something about a poll that said about a quarter of New York's primary care physicians are planning to go to some form of "cash only" practice, and another quarter is thinking about it.
These numbers may be exaggerated, but if you cut them in half, that is still enough to put "Obamacare" in difficulty.

Further, the people who are supposed to - and can - pay higher premiums to support those who can't, may not feel as patriotic as Kirsten Powers, but just say "Nuts to this, I will just start another savings account for medical emergencies, and pay cash."

I would think that this would be a reasonable reaction for many looking not only at higher premiums, but also higher deductibles.

Hagar said...

@Henry,
The other thing about this is that if they indeed get this system up and working, and people start using it, their information will be out there forever accessible to a large number of insurance companies with different IT systems, and this just has to equally accessible to legions of hackers and scamsters with more smarts and time on their hands than insurance companies do.