Federal Government Spent $4.4 Billion On State Insurance Exchanges

14 websites -- $4.4 billion dollars. Only the US Government can spend that much money and produce nothing but a heaping pile of failure.

Quick, let's put them in charge of everything.

The Obama administration gave states roughly $4.4 billion in taxpayer dollars to set up their own ObamaCare websites, according to a new analysis, in the latest revelation about the faucet of federal spending switched on by the 2010 passage of the health care law.

Some of the states even took federal money, then decided to let the federal site handle enrollment.

So it was just another Obama slush fund.

Meanwhile, as regards the several hundred million dollar healthcare.gov pile of rancid garbage, Obama's team has a great idea: Let's just skip the website altogether, and tell people to contact insurers directly.

On a mission to help people bypass distressed health-insurance websites, the Obama administration said it may allow big insurers to directly sign up those who qualify for tax credits, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Currently, customers who are eligible for subsidies can get them only when purchasing coverage on the exchanges.

Wow, sounds like another deployment of Unilateral Executive Lawmaking.

As you probably know from @benk84, Obama has a hot new way to define a 100% functioning website: as an 80% functioning website.

he Washington Post reported on Sunday that the Obama administration will consider the new online marketplace a success if 80 percent of users can buy health insurance. That is absurd. First, it's another broken promise. The president and his advisers responded to the disastrous rollout last month by vowing to deliver an Amazon.com-quality website by the end of November. (If history remembers President Obama for one thing, other than his barrier-breaking 2008 election, it might be the outsized and unmet expectations that paved the path of his presidency.) Second, in what other line of work is 20 percent failure considered a success? If one out of every five meals served by a restaurant is inedible, the joint goes out of business.

This is similar to, but more generous than, his previous guarantee that 100% of you could keep your insurance if you liked your insurance, which actually meant about 40% of you could.

That could mean that 1 million of the 5 million of the people who've lost their insurance due to Obamacare are prevented from getting new insurance altogether, at any price. They won't even be able to pay the sticker-shock prices that everyone else will be subjected to.

Update: An Administration official says 80% functionality is the best case scenario.

Update via @elliosch.

posted by Ace at 06:12 PM

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