Does Not Compute

As some of you have been discussing Healthcare.gov and its bewildering array of shortcomings, here’s Mark Steyn on other grand projects that didn’t quite work out: 

The witness who coughed up the intriguing tidbit about Obamacare’s exemption from privacy protections was one Cheryl Campbell of something called CGI… CGI is so Canadian their name is French: Conseillers en Gestion et Informatique. Their most famous government project was for the Canadian Firearms Registry. The registry was estimated to cost in total $119 million, which would be offset by $117 million in fees. That’s a net cost of $2 million. Instead, by 2004 the CBC (Canada’s PBS) was reporting costs of some $2 billion — or a thousand times more expensive.

Yeah, yeah, I know, we’ve all had bathroom remodellers like that. But in this case the database had to register some 7 million long guns belonging to some two-and-a-half to three million Canadians. That works out to almost $300 per gun — or somewhat higher than the original estimate for processing a firearm registration of $4.60. Of those $300 gun registrations, Canada’s auditor general reported to parliament that much of the information was either duplicated or wrong in respect to basic information such as names and addresses. Sound familiar?

The rest. 

Comments

[Joan]

when you’re mad enough to try it, the failure is not the insignificant enrollment numbers, but the vaporization of the existing health plans of 119,000 Pennsylvanians, 160,000 Californians, 300,000 Floridians, 800,000 in New Jersey

It's now half a million Californians getting screwed.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/362263/500000-californians-lose-health-policies-wesley-j-smith

[Steve]

"Yeah, yeah, I know, we’ve all had bathroom remodellers like that."

I bloody hope not. Mind you, if a £3,000.00 bathroom re-fit ended up costing £3,000,000.00 my Architects fees would rise accordingly so on second thoughts, does anyone know where can I get some government work?

[Simen Thoresen]

But in this case the database had to register some 7 million long guns belonging to some two-and-a-half to three million Canadians. That works out to almost $300 per gun

At $300 pr gun, I'd think the Canadian govt would be able to get a nice, socialized deal with one of the gun manufacturers, and provide each citizen with their own, free gun. An Obamagun, as the kids would refer to it, I think.

That way, the govt would know that each citizen had a gun, and a more complex registry would be unnecessary.

See? I can work within the system.

-S

[Broken down by age and sex]

When the clottery started in the UK, some bright spark said he would take out insurance if his numbers came up and he had forgotten to buy a ticket that week. The clottery people laughed and said no one would offer insurance like that, but when one broker said they would take that the clottery got annoyed and said it was illegal placing a bet on their 'game"

In a similar spirit can Americans take out insurance against Obamacare biting them hard in a soft place?

[David]

The spam filter is twitchy again. If anyone has trouble posting comments, email me and I’ll shake them loose.

An Obamagun, as the kids would refer to it, I think.

Heh.

[Dom]

I wonder if these two things have happened simultaneously often enough to show up in the data: 1) Someone finds his policy has been dropped because of regulations, and 2) he can't get through on the exchange. If so, then O-care has actually increased the ranks of the uninsured. How's that for an unintended consequence!

[dicentra]

I wonder if these two things have happened simultaneously often enough to show up in the data

Yes, yes they have. Multiple headlines last week pointed out that more people have been dropped in [state] than have signed up for Obamacare on the exchanges.

Furthermore, what you sign up for on that web site is not just Obamacare but also Medicaid, which is an existing low-income program. THOSE are the people getting through.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-25/all-the-wrong-people-are-getting-obamacare.html

"[A] CBS News report discusses a growing source of disquiet: In almost half the states with exchanges, the overwhelming majority of enrollments are coming from Medicaid, not the new insurance markets -- 87 percent in Washington, 82 percent in Kentucky and, last time I looked, 100 percent in Oregon (which delayed opening its insurance exchange in order to work out technical bugs). The Medicaid expansion side of the bill seems to be working fine in the states that opted for the expansion. But the private insurance side doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of pickup."

[Ralph Caruso]

"...The Medicaid expansion side of the bill seems to be working fine in the states that opted for the expansion. But the private insurance side doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of pickup."

That is not a bug - it is a feature.

[Paul]

Must say, I've not seem much of this story in the UK media, especially the BBC. They're covering the phonetapping scandals, but not much on the Obamacare roll out.

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

Single-payer legal care.

Because any restrictions we want to put on doctors are worth trying on lawyers, first.

[R. Sherman]

Well, I, for one, am very happy that our new health-care overlords decided to suddenly declare the health insurance policy I've had for 10 years "illegal." The good news is that I now have contraceptive and abortion coverage at twice the price of my old policy, even though there's zero possibility of our having any more children. At least now I can sleep easy, comforted by the knowledge that parthenogenesis is no longer an issue.

[Dom]

Does anyone know how the new regulations work? For example, I'm a single man. Do I still need insurance with maternity leave?

[R. Sherman]

Dom, you don't need maternity insurance, but you get to have it as a mandatory benefit in all O-care policies. Congratulations!

[Dom]

RS, that's what I meant. When I buy insurance, it will have maternity leave as one of the "benefits", and of course, the cost of the insurance will reflect that.

[D]

Well Dom, it's very important to the cause of fairness that you get maternity care. Otherwise the insurance companies were charging women more for their insurance on the minor technicality that they use more care and are more expensive for the insurer. They're not going to lower the price for women, so they just raise it for you! The ladies get to feel better this way. Don't you want the ladies to feel better?

[David]

So, [Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius] is saying that putting together a website and linking it to various corporate and government databases, then adequately testing it before unleashing it upon the public should have taken six years – “five years of construction, one year of testing.”

That’s quite a bit longer than it took to build the Hoover Dam.

[Franklin]

As the scope, might, and insidiousness of the state increases, the probability of the involvement of cronyist parasites in the operation of the state approaches one. This is as dependable as shit attracting flies and it's only confusing and surprising to people who believe in state power even as it fails right in front of them.

[WTP]

Obama campaign manager gets poor customer support from Intuit. A nation literally weeps for him.

http://www.jammiewf.com/2013/comedy-gold-obama-stooge-jim-messina-frustrated-with-intuit-quickbooks-online/

[dicentra]

The Benevolent State is a comforting lie. It removes all that scary decision-making and consequence-facing.

Snuggle into mommy's lap and all will be well.

[Hal]

Snuggle into mommy's lap and all will be well

http://www.integratedsociopsychology.net/infant_monkeys-attachment.html

[Franklin]

In related news, presidential Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett yesterday tweeted, "FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans."

https://twitter.com/vj44/statuses/394978744227475456

Which is precisely what the insurance companies have been forced to do because the ACA effectively criminalized millions of policies.

[R. Sherman]

Franklin, the ACA required changes in policies in 2010. The regulations under the law then used these changes to make policies illegal. In other words, the system was designed to force healthy people with private insurance out of the system to subsidize the sick and poor.

[Dr Cromarty]

OT, David but I suspect you've already seen that an art student is ready to shock, SHOCK I tell you, the boring patriarchal, conventional, bourgeois suburbanites out if our heteronormative prejudices by having a shag in front of an audience:

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/28/art-student-lose-virginity

Aren't these things called 'peep shows' or 'live floor shows' and quite common in our larger cities?

[David]

I suspect you’ve already seen…

Oh yes, I saw. And found it very hard to care.