Arizona’s Obamacare Co-Op to Shut Down After Receiving $93.3 Million From the Government

Tags

Arizona, Healthcare exchange, Obamacare, Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act

 

The Daily Signal by Melissa Quinn

Two days before the start of Obamacare’s open enrollment period, a nonprofit health insurance provider located in Arizona announced that it would be closing its doors, leaving more than 56,000 consumers to purchase new insurance plans.

On Friday, the Arizona Department of Insurance announced that Meritus Health Partners is winding down its operations and will no longer offer coverage in 2016. Meritus Health Partners is the 11th of 23 co-ops, or consumer-operated and oriented plans, created under Obamacare to shut its doors. The co-ops have received a combined $2.4 billion from the federal government.

Consumers currently insured by Meritus will remain covered for the rest of the year.

“[W]ith open enrollment beginning this weekend and many Meritus policyholders subject to re-enrollment, it was vital that the department step in and protect Arizona citizens,” Andy Tobin, the state director of insurance, said in a statemen.

Meritus Health Partners received $93.3 million in start-up and solvency loans from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Despite the money the co-op received, the nonprofit insurance company struggled to enroll consumers in 2014, an audit from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General found.

According to the report, just 869 Arizonans purchased plans from Meritus Health Partners by the end of 2014. The co-op had projected that it would enroll 23,998 consumers[…]

Continue Reading, click here… Arizona’s Obamacare Co-Op to Shut Down After Receiving $93.3 Million From the Government

Permission to reprint granted by The Heritage Foundation.

LINK:
http://dailysignal.com/2015/11/02/arizonas-obamacare-co-op-to-shut-down-after-receiving-93-3-million-from-the-government/

Obamacare Nightmare Continues as Nearly 3 million Medicaid applications remain unprocessed

Tags

fail, healthcare, Healthcare exchange, Medicaid, Obamacare

 

Roll Call

At least 2.9 million Americans who signed up for Medicaid coverage as part of the health care overhaul have not had their applications processed, with some paperwork sitting in queues since last fall, according to a 50-state survey by CQ Roll Call.

Those delays — due to technological snags with enrollment websites, bureaucratic tangles at state Medicaid programs and a surge of applicants — betray Barack Obama’s promise to expand access to health care for some of the nation’s most vulnerable citizens.

As a result, some low-income people are being prevented from accessing benefits they are legally entitled to receive. Those who face delays may instead put off doctors appointments and lose access to their medicines….

Continue Reading

 

This is insane. A little while ago, I had a conversation with the clerk in a grocery store in my neighborhood. This man informed me that he completed his application through the healthcare exchange last November. As of the end of April, he was still waiting. Even worse, this fellow has diagnosed a year ago with stomach cancer.

To hear Progressives tell it, Obamacare is working just fine. Yeah right. H/t Weasel Zippers.

 

LINKS:
http://www.rollcall.com/news/the_hidden_failure_of_obamas_health_care_overhaul-233506-1.html?pg=1&dczone=news

Nevada Gives Up on $91 Million Obamacare Exchange

Tags

Government Waste, Healthcare exchange, Nevada, Obamacare

 

The Foundry by Alyene Senger

Nevada has become the latest state to announce it will concede Obamacare exchange enrollment responsibilities to the federal government via healthcare.gov.

Nevada became the third state-based exchange to make such a decision, joining Massachusetts, which is joining the federal exchange temporarily while it works to fix its state-based exchange, and Oregon, which has ditched its exchange entirely—making a total of 39 states dependent on the federal exchange for, at a minimum, enrollment in 2015.

Federal taxpayers already have sent about $4.9 billion total in grants to the states to establish exchanges, with almost $4.2 billion going to just the 16 states and the District of Colombia that had planned to operate their own exchanges in 2014.

Nevada received $91 million in grants and, as of April 19, had enrolled 45,390 people, for a federal taxpayer cost of $2,005 per enrollee. Cover Oregon, the exchange that was never able to successfully enroll one person online from start to finish, got $305 million in federal grants and had 68,308 enrollees, so its cost was about $4,465 per enrollee. Massachusetts’s per-enrollee cost was $5,648. Hawaii received $205 million in grant money and enrolled only 8,592 people, for an astonishing per-enrollee cost of $23,859.

Worse yet, in Nevada, the federal government is now spending even more money to transition their exchange to the federal exchange.

According to Nevada’s announcement:

“The federal government will pay all costs associated with transitioning from the BOS [Xerox’s health insurance enrollment system] to healthcare.gov. Nevada will not be required to pay a monthly per -member per-month fee to healthcare.gov for its use. The federal government will pay 90 percent of any costs incurred to disconnect Nevada’s Medicaid system from the BOS and to connect Nevada’s Medicaid system to healthcare.gov. The initial high estimates of this cost ranges between $15 – $20 million, of which Nevada must pay 10 percent.”

As with much of Obamacare, it remains unclear where this additional money will come from, what the total costs will be or whether other states are receiving the same deal.

In response to this this continuous steam of Obamacare exchange spending, Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, recently introduced a bill that would make states that choose to no longer operate their own exchange return the taxpayer dollars that were spent on the failed exchanges to the federal government. The legislation would require states to repay 10 percent of their wasted federal grant funding each year for 10 years. This would force Nevada, Oregon, and Massachusetts to repay a combined $575 million.

 

 

 

Reprinted with permission, The Foundry, The Heritage Foundation.

LINK:
http://blog.heritage.org/2014/05/28/nevada-gives-91-million-obamacare-exchange/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
http://blog.heritage.org/
http://blog.heritage.org/wp-content/uploads/BL-cms-grants-for-exchanges_HIGHRES1.jpg

Obamacare Contractor paying entry clerks to do nothing while still hiring

Tags

fraud, Government corruption, Government Waste, Healthcare exchange, Obamacare

 

DailyMail.co.uk

Employees working for Obamacare contractor Serco do nothing for days or weeks at a time, a whistle blower within the company told a local news station this week.

The employees want to work but there’s not enough work to go around, the employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told St. Louis, Missouri’s News 4 KMOV.

The employee alleged that Serco is keeping its workforce unnecessarily high to get more money out of the federal government.

‘They want to hire more people, even though we still don’t have work to keep the people that we have busy,’ the employee said….

After it began looking into the initial whistle blower’s claims, KMOV said it found even more employees who were willing to attest to claims.

It also found a post online from someone claiming to be a former Serco employee who said the company ‘is a joke….’

 

Continue Reading

Serco has three data facilities, Kentucky, Missouri and Oklahoma that are responsible for processing Obamacare applications in spite of the fact that employees working at those facilities have no work to do.

Some employees enter two applications a month if that much yet Serco who has a 12-year $1.25 billion contract with Health and Human Services to process paper Obamacare applications continues to hire new workers.

H/t KMOV-4.

 

LINK:
http://www.kmov.com/news/investigates/News-4-investigates-Workers-paid-taxpayer-dollars-to-do-nothing-259002161.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2627353/Employees-charged-reviewing-paper-applications-Obamacare-contractor-day.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

Belarus developers wrote Obamacare software inserting malicious malware to breach site

Tags

Belarus, Cybersecurity, hacking, Healthcare exchange, Healthcare.gov, HHS, identity fraud, identity theft, Obamacare, RUSSIA, USA

As if Americans need another reason to avoid the Healthcare.gov sites, we are now learning that the Obama administration (HHS) contracted developers in Russian linked Belarus to write the software program for the Healthcare.gov sites.

U.S. intelligence agencies last week informed Health & Human Services that software developer firm EPAM, who helped build the Healthcare.gov site, may have inserted malicious software creating a secret back door that would allow spying and countless cyber security attacks.

In addition, this illegal backdoor would compromise the personal information of millions of Americans who signed up for Obamacare vulnerable to identity theft and bank fraud.  Healthcare providers, government agencies and medical institutions are also vulnerable.

… Security officials urged HHS to immediately conduct inspections of the network software for malicious code. The software currently is used in all medical facilities and insurance companies in the United States. The officials also recommended that HHS use security specialists not related to software vendors for the inspections to reduce further risks….

U.S. intelligence discovered the problem when Valery Tsepkalo, director of the government-backed High-Technology Park (HTP) located in Minsk revealed their role in “helping Obama complete his insurance reform.”  Translation:  HHS is a client and those gullible Americans who signed up for Obamacare, our personal ATMs.

‘…Our programmers wrote the program that appears on the monitors in all hospitals and all insurance companies—they will see the full profile of the given patient,’ Tsepkalo said June 25 on Voice of Russia Radio….

The software enables hackers or government agencies to route data from the Obamacare website to foreign locations in stealth mode.

For the record, there has already been an occasion(s) when traffic from the Healthcare.gov sites was re-routed to Belarus enabling government officials and hackers to sift through the information of millions of Americans raising privacy concerns. (It is only a concern when other nations do it.)   H/t Grumpy Opinions.

HHS gets all the personal and financial information of Americans through their Healthcare.gov site, which is nothing, more than a personal ATM for felons globally.  Not to exclude the fleecing by the IRS, Americans will never know what hit them. Another privacy violation courtesy of the Obama administration.  Nice.  Real nice.  So tell me, how much is too much America?

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich) was shocked to learn that overseas programmers wrote parts of the Healthcare.gov program and is now calling for an investigation into the matter.

See What? Bela? Bela Lugosi? Bela..rus? Whaaat??

LINKS:
http://freebeacon.com/the-belarusian-connection/
http://grumpyelder.com/2014/02/what-bela-bela-lugosi-bela-rus-whaaat/

One in Seven New Mexico Certified Obamacare Navigators are in FBI Database

Tags

Corruption, criminal elements, FBI, fraud, Healthcare exchange, Kathleen Sebelius, Obamacare

According to public records obtained by National Review Online, the names of one out of every seven “certified” Obamacare navigators in the state of New Mexico have popped up in the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database.

…A hit in the NCIC does not necessarily reflect a criminal conviction. The database can include, for example, arrest records and criminal cases that were dismissed or led to an acquittal, according to the FBI….

…The records obtained by NRO did not specify how many of the 38 navigators with NCIC hits had been convicted of a crime….

How assuring is it to know that millions of people are unknowingly giving their personal and financial information to possible criminals after Kathleen Sebelius confirmed at a hearing last year the likelihood of such occurrences.

The crimes committed by navigators whose names are showing up in the crime databases range from domestic violence to aggravated battery, and aggravated assault, drug charges and child abuse to name a few.

In addition, if it makes you feel better, New Mexican authorities want to assure you that they were careful not to license anyone that they considered a “risk.”

Gives all new meaning to “gangster government” or the “Obama Mafia.”

 

See: Obamacare’s Fishy Navigators

LINK:
http://nationalreview.com/article/368597/obamacares-fishy-navigators-jillian-kay-melchior