Tuesday, December 3, 2013

You'll feel much better about things after reading this sob story... trust us


The healthcare.gov website recovery/resurrection deadline of December 1st has come and gone and as far as we can tell the spin coming out of the White House has been that enough improvements have been made that they can declare victory and move on… to talk about anything… anything other than that damned website.


OK, then, but…






As a slight aside, at least one cyber-security expert thinks the pre-existing security concerns have been made worse by the “fix”.


“It doesn’t appear that any security fixes were done at all,” David Kennedy, CEO of the online security firm TrustedSec, told the Washington Free Beacon.

Kennedy said fundamental safeguards missing from Healthcare.gov that were identified by his company more than a month ago have yet to be put in place.

“There are a number of security concerns already with the website, and that’s without even actually hacking the site, that’s just a purely passive analysis of [it],” he said. “We found a number of critical exposures that were around sensitive information, the ability to hack into the site, things like that. We reported those issues and none of those appear to have been addressed at all.”

After warning Americans when testifying before Congress on Nov. 19 to stay away from Healthcare.gov, Kennedy now says the situation is even worse.






But back to and to paraphrase Nancy Pelosi, accessing the website so we can find out what’s in it – that may not end up so well.


Via Hot Air:







Binns had been trying to navigate the government’s health care website since October to find affordable insurance for her husband, a 60-year-old who has a pre-existing condition and whose job doesn’t offer coverage.

What she finally found for him Monday carries a premium of more than $400 a month and a $5,000 annual deductible.
“How can I pay this kind of money out?” she asked. “It’s going to take at least a second job and praying that I would make enough on a second job just to pay for this health insurance.”

“I thought this was going to be the miracle for us,” she said, “and it’s not.”




Expecting miracles of your federal government is probably not the healthiest sentiment for a functioning constitutional republic a concept from which we are moving away at break-neck speed if you have been paying attention.


But what is most puzzling about this anecdote is that the elderly and/or people with pre-existing conditions… these people… were they very people ObamaCare was supposed to help. Yeah, we all knew that the young and healthy were going to take in the shorts, paying more for healthcare they won’t use in order to subsidize the care for people like the Binns but it turns out the Binns are getting screwed as well.


Kind of puts a dent in that “wealth redistribution” argument conservatives and libertarians have been making against ObamaCare, huh? Really tough to make that argument when it appears that everyone is getting soaked by this thing.


It wasn’t supposed to be this way but don’t you, in that egalitarian heart of yours, feel better that your government is not appearing to be playing favorites. Yeah, we thought so.




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2 comments:

dustydog said...

No problems. Someone will sue, and the federal government will pay for all the healthcare of everyone who can't get onto the website, or who got their insurance cancelled. Then, anyone who wants to stop paying for their own health insurance can just hop on the government-paid for insurance.

Their goal was and is single-payer. There is no way anyone can stop single payer now.

Dean said...

So, what you are saying is that we weren't going to get to single-payer via competence and honesty.