Earlier today, I wrote about the numbers of people signing up for insurance at the Obamacare exchanges in connection with the latest lie coming out of Washington. Since that time, two things have happened which make clear that there is essentially no way that America will get to January 1 without their being huge numbers of people who lose their insurance coverage due to Obamacare.
First, HHS secretary Sebelius testified before Congress today and said that he department is now "hand matching" information for individuals so that it can be sent to the proper insurance companies. What this means is that government workers are checking the applications By HAND, BY HAND, after the sign up on the computer is completed. This is the method they have chosen to eliminate errors in the process which have resulted from the computer problems.
Let's stop here for a moment. Suppose that it takes only five minutes per application to do this step. That seems too low an estimate to me, but let's use it anyway. That means that a government worker could do twelve applications each hour or 96 in a normal eight hour workday. The problem, of course, is that there are expected to be something like eight to ten million applications on the exchanges by the end of March. Checking eight million applications by hand would take about 84 thousand hours of work. There is no way this is going to get done. It is the equivalent of publishing a newspaper by handwriting it. It is unbelievable.
Second, we now have information about what portion of the people who ordered policies have paid for them. As you may recall, the feds told us this morning that about 350,000 people have selected policies on line. Only part of those who made a selection actually ordered them, and we still do not have those numbers. We now know, however, that out of the ones who ordered the policies, only between 5% and 15% have paid for those policies with the figures varying by state. What this means is that only something like 25,000 people have actually purchased insurance through the exchanges during the first two months of operation. THIS IS A DISASTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There is really no way the program can recover. Let's hope that Congress repeals this mess soon.
First, HHS secretary Sebelius testified before Congress today and said that he department is now "hand matching" information for individuals so that it can be sent to the proper insurance companies. What this means is that government workers are checking the applications By HAND, BY HAND, after the sign up on the computer is completed. This is the method they have chosen to eliminate errors in the process which have resulted from the computer problems.
Let's stop here for a moment. Suppose that it takes only five minutes per application to do this step. That seems too low an estimate to me, but let's use it anyway. That means that a government worker could do twelve applications each hour or 96 in a normal eight hour workday. The problem, of course, is that there are expected to be something like eight to ten million applications on the exchanges by the end of March. Checking eight million applications by hand would take about 84 thousand hours of work. There is no way this is going to get done. It is the equivalent of publishing a newspaper by handwriting it. It is unbelievable.
Second, we now have information about what portion of the people who ordered policies have paid for them. As you may recall, the feds told us this morning that about 350,000 people have selected policies on line. Only part of those who made a selection actually ordered them, and we still do not have those numbers. We now know, however, that out of the ones who ordered the policies, only between 5% and 15% have paid for those policies with the figures varying by state. What this means is that only something like 25,000 people have actually purchased insurance through the exchanges during the first two months of operation. THIS IS A DISASTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There is really no way the program can recover. Let's hope that Congress repeals this mess soon.
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