Saturday, November 21, 2015

UnitedHealth Group "opting out" of Affordable Care Act? BULLSHIT.

The news is all over mainstream media: United Healthcare will probably bail out of Obamacare.

Let's call this what it is: An outrage to every taxpayer, and intolerable.  It also reveals yet more incompetence in the crafting of this so-called healthcare "reform."

It's bad enough that insurance companies are allowed to sell half-assed policies under Obamacare, policies that care providers can identify as subsidized; those providers usually don't accept them, even when they accept supposedly identical non-subsidized policies.  Care providers should have no knowledge of who's paying for a PPO (for example), and insurance companies should not be allowed to reimburse doctors at different rates simply because of how a client is paying for his insurance.  If Blue Shield has determined that $200 is a fair rate for setting a broken arm, then why would that vary because of how the client is paying for it?

The fact that it's ALLOWED TO means that this healthcare law is corrupt and incompetent.

Now we have a company "opting out."  THAT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL.  It is our country, and these companies do business at our discretion.  The health of this nation should NOT be a for-profit enterprise in the first place.  But it is, and despite the gravy train we taxpayers trowel out to these scumbags, they're now "opting out" of their responsibility to provide what we pay for?

NO WAY.

Look up your Congressional representatives here.

Write to them.  Tell them that we can't stand for companies ripping off our citizens and undermining what little "reform" we've been able to enact.  Tell them that insurance companies should not be allowed to "opt out" of our national healthcare plan, and shouldn't be allowed to sell plans that are identifiable as subsidized or reimburse at different rates because they're subsidized.

Citizens get fined if they "opt out."  So why don't insurance companies?  They should be fined so heavily that it's more economical to simply deliver what they're supposed to be delivering: insurance to all of us.

The fact is that this "reform" didn't go far enough.  We should have abolished for-profit healthcare and detached insurance from people's jobs entirely.  This idiotic association cripples our country and renders all talk of "entrepreneurship" or "small business" a sham, an insult, and monumental hypocrisy.  We can't quit dead-end jobs and start a business or be an entrepreneur when our insurance is still inexplicably tied to OUR JOBS!

Friday, November 6, 2015

Covered California Web site is a defective pile of shit.

I don't even know where to begin excoriating this monumental offense to every California taxpayer.  From beginning to end, there is absolutely no excuse for the incompetence and defectiveness of this Web site, TWO YEARS IN.

This year I was denied a health-insurance subsidy.  Why?  Because I MAKE TOO LITTLE.  That's right: I want to pay for health insurance, but the government is TURNING MY MONEY AWAY.  Now that should offend every taxpayer in the country.

But that's not all.  I actually want to report more income to "qualify" for a subsidy.  But I can't, because the CoveredCA Web site can't do simple math.  Look at this pathetic functionality:

What are we to do when we're denied healthcare because a Web site CAN'T DO MULTIPLICATION?

Oh, but there's more.  You can't even fix this mess because if you change anything, even if it's only your income, you're presented with this baffling (and of course defective) list of alleged changes that you made.  Except, of course, that you didn't make any of them except one:

Yes, this will claim that you changed your coverage, even if you didn't.  And there's no harmless "reason" option to select.  For the other entries, you can just select "other."  But not the change of insurance coverage.  Every available "reason" is potentially disqualifying.

And want to get "help" from Covered California?  Good luck.  The "live chat" button has NEVER worked.  Not once since this debacle launched.



It's unbelievable.  Somebody got paid OUR MONEY to create this inexcusably defective pile of shit. And it has sat there, steaming, for two years.