Quotesoftheday postedat10:01

Quotes of the day

posted at 10:01 pm on May 14, 2014 by Allahpundit

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In announcing the sudden switch to a stunned newsroom Wednesday afternoon, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of the paper and the chairman of the Times Company, attributed the move to “an issue with management in the newsroom.” [Abramson's] ouster, according to people in the company briefed on the decision, came after growing tension between Ms. Abramson and Mr. Sulzberger, and a decision by Ms. Abramson to try to hire a senior editor from outside the newspaper to share a co-managing editor title with Mr. Baquet…

“I’ve loved my run at The Times,” she said in a statement. “I got to work with the best journalists in the world doing so much stand-up journalism,” she added, noting her appointment of many senior female editors as one of her achievements. She did not return phone calls seeking comment…

[Sulzberger's] vagueness on the precise reasons for the switch precipitated a swirl of rumors in a newsroom that was still trying to digest the news. But the people briefed on the process said the tension between Mr. Sulzberger and Ms. Abramson had steadily increased, most recently over criticisms of her leadership style. She had recently engaged a consultant to help her with that aspect of her job, but last week the decision was made to end her tenure.

***

What is immediately clear, however, is that Abramson still has a big fat New York Times “T” on her back and that tattoo removal is both extremely painful and costly.

In an April interview with Out magazine, Abramson said that she has several tattoos on her back, including the paper’s iconic “T.”

“I have two [tattoos] on my back that are the two institutions that I revere, that have shaped me,” she said at the time. “One is unsurprisingly the amazing ‘T’ in The New York Times newspaper. Then I have a Crimson Harvard ‘H’ and that’s for Harvard, and also for my husband Henry, who we met when we were in the same class at Harvard.”

***

Stunned newsroom. pic.twitter.com/dooXpAHJoR

— David Gelles (@dgelles) May 14, 2014

***

Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs. “She confronted the top brass,” one close associate said, and this may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was “pushy,” a characterization that, for many, has an inescapably gendered aspect. Sulzberger is known to believe that the Times, as a financially beleaguered newspaper, has had to retreat on some of its generous pay and pension benefits; Abramson had also been at the Times for many fewer years than Keller, having spent much of her career at the Wall Street Journal, accounting for some of the pension disparity. (I was also told by another friend of hers that the pay gap with Keller has since been closed.) But, to women at an institution that was once sued by its female employees for discriminatory practices, the question brings up ugly memories. Whether Abramson was right or wrong, both sides were left unhappy.

***

[The Times], in both its news and opinion coverage, has been a leading light on the gender pay gap, having called the issue not “just a women’s issue, but a societal and moral one,” a problem that “comes from differences within occupations, not between them,” and an outrage that “persists even in workplaces committed to gender equality.”

It’s fully plausible that Abramson just had bad luck in ascending at the very moment the Grey Lady realized how dire its financial troubles were. The paper took a bath in building its ridiculous Renzo Piano-designed headquarters just as the real estate bubble burst; the industry is in secular decline; and it’s telling that one of the tropes going around today is that America’s Newspaper of Record needs to take a “digital-first” focus — a reform that will bring the paper fully up to 1995. To be fair, the Times’s site is way ahead of most newspapers’ online offerings. But I believe they still have a paywall — I don’t look at it enough to know — and online paywalls are an offense against both journalism’s future and its past. (Subscriptions and newsstand sales were always nominal revenue sources that at best covered part of the cost of delivery. Anything that stands between you and your readers is bad mojo.)

***

Abramson also suffered from perceptions among staff that she was condescending and combative. Sources at the Times told POLITICO last year that Abramson had become a source of widespread frustration and anxiety within the newsroom, and described her as stubborn and condescending. Such sentiments were widely criticized as sexist.

Sources also noted that Abramson rarely engaged with newsroom staff and was often absent from the office, even when the paper was undergoing a severe round of buyouts in early 2013…

Whatever the case, the decision to abruptly fire Abramson, who up until this week had been the public face of the paper, was seen by many in the newsroom as a tacit admission of management failure by Sulzberger.

***

2c. a significant number of journalists who worked for her – even some in editing ranks – found her brusque to point of rudeness

— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) May 14, 2014

2d none of which should discount her ability as a journalist – or Q of whether a male exec editor would find his manner so scrutinized

— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) May 14, 2014

8. Abramson's firing most closely resembles that of former NYT Co CEO Janet Robinson – who oversaw introduction of now-heralded paywall

— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) May 14, 2014

8b Brutal for Sulzberger to deny Abramson a chance to address the troops – to relive her highs and lows as a top editor for 16+ years

— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) May 14, 2014

***

When Sulzberger said he was sure it doesn’t “come as a surprise to you,” video editor Bruce Headlam spoke up in Abramson’s defense, according to a person who was present. “It does come as a surprise to me,” the source recalls him saying.

Two other editors also voiced their concerns, sources with knowledge of the meeting told Capital. National editor Alison Mitchell suggested that Abramson’s firing wouldn’t sit well with a broad swath of female Times journalists who saw her as a role model. (Abramson became the Times’ first female executive editor in 2011, after Bill Keller stepped down.) Assistant managing editor Susan Chira seconded that notion.

Our source who was in the room characterzed Sulzberger’s response thusly: When women get to top management positions, they are sometimes fired, just as men are.

***

Some facts, according to a recent Women’s Media Center study:

* At the nation’s 10 most widely circulated newspapers, men had 63 percent of the bylines, nearly two for every one for a woman. (The study looked at bylines only in the first section of the papers.)

* Among those papers, The Times had the biggest gender gap – with 69 percent of bylines going to men.

* Women are far more likely to cover health and lifestyle news. They’re less likely to cover crime, justice and world politics.

* At three major papers, including The Times, and four newspaper syndicates, male opinion-page writers outnumber female writers four to one.

***

Abramson opened up about the often harsh spotlight that followed her in a keynote speech and question-and-answer session at the Journalism and Women Symposium (JAWS) annual gathering in Vermont last October. The Poynter Institute reported on and posted the speech, during which Abramson commented on an April 2013 Politico story that said she was “on the verge of losing the newsroom.”

Abramson noted that the story used “anonymous quotes,” and said of the journalists who came to her aide, “it was thrilling.” She said it was “like a prairie fire among, like, other women journalists who just, like, saw this thing as, like, a shoddy, sexist, you know, ad feminem attack on me.”

“I’m not saying I’m perfect,” she told the women at the JAWS meeting.

***

“And that’s all I’m going to say about it,” said Sulzberger, according to two sources who were present. “It was an issue of newsroom management.”…

The details will certainly creep out. It’s just a question of whether Gawker, BuzzFeed or The Huffington Post will get them first. Given that reality, it doesn’t make sense for the Times to sit back and concede the story to its competitors.

But even if the details weren’t likely to leak out, hypocrisy can taint a newsroom’s brand. Certainly if this were another private company where there is significant public scrutiny, Times reporters would be aggressively working sources to get the details. Journalists are often counseled to expect the same scrutiny of their lives that they provide to the lives of others. News companies should abide by the same advice.

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Tags: baquet, bill keller, compensation, editor, equal, jill abramson, New York Times, pay, sulzberger, War on Women, women

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Ohmy:NYTexecutiveeditorreportedlycannedin

Oh my: NYT executive editor reportedly canned in part because … she wanted to be paid as much as her male predecessor; Update: NYT denies

posted at 6:34 pm on May 14, 2014 by Allahpundit

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It wasn’t the only reason, claims the New Yorker’s Ken Auletta, but it was one of them. So, if you’ve been wondering what that mysterious smell is this afternoon, there’s your answer: It’s a Category Five sh*tstorm on the horizon, moving at ferocious speed towards America’s most famous liberal newspaper.

No need to pop the popcorn. I’ve made plenty. Behold the war on women:

Fellow-journalists and others scrambled to find out what had happened. Sulzberger had fired Abramson, and he did not try to hide that. In a speech to the newsroom on Wednesday afternoon, he said, “I chose to appoint a new leader of our newsroom because I believe that new leadership will improve some aspects …” Abramson chose not to attend the announcement, and not to pretend that she had volunteered to step down.

As with any such upheaval, there’s a history behind it. Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs. “She confronted the top brass,” one close associate said, and this may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was “pushy,” a characterization that, for many, has an inescapably gendered aspect. Sulzberger is known to believe that the Times, as a financially beleaguered newspaper, has had to retreat on some of its generous pay and pension benefits; Abramson had also been at the Times for many fewer years than Keller, having spent much of her career at the Wall Street Journal, accounting for some of the pension disparity. (I was also told by another friend of hers that the pay gap with Keller has since been closed.) But, to women at an institution that was once sued by its female employees for discriminatory practices, the question brings up ugly memories. Whether Abramson was right or wrong, both sides were left unhappy.

David Folkenflik of NPR tweeted this afternoon that he’s independently confirmed the gist of Auletta’s story, that Abramson did indeed challenge Sulzberger and crew about her pay. Her rap for being “pushy” goes back years, and inspired a Politico profile in 2013 in which unnamed NYTers described her as “stubborn and condescending, saying they found her difficult to work with.” A fair cop, or another double standard aimed at a “bossy” woman who’d draw no complaints if not for her gender? In the interest of making this as miserable as possible for the Times, I’m calling it sexism. Straight up.

I don’t want to raise expectations too much but I think this food fight might end up being even more deliciously schadenfreudean than SEIU versus Media Matters. The good news is that, unlike most of liberal media, the Times will now have a minority in charge: New executive editor Dean Baquet is black. The bad news?

If the NYTimes pays Baquet more than Ambramson, it's proof they are sexist. If it doesn't, it's proof they are racist AND sexist.

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 14, 2014

Update: Annnnnd here’s the obligatory denial:

“Jill’s total compensation as executive editor was not less than Bill Keller’s, so that is just incorrect,” New York Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy told POLITICO on Wednesday. “Her pension benefit, like all Times employees, is based on her years of service and compensation. The pension benefit was frozen in 2009.”

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Tags: auletta, bill keller, equal, gender, inequality, jill abramson, pay, sulzberger, woman

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Insurers:80-90%ofObamaCareenrolleesarepayingtheir

Insurers: 80-90% of ObamaCare enrollees are paying their premiums, not 67% like that House committee said

posted at 12:41 pm on May 7, 2014 by Allahpundit

If you read this post last week, you already know what accounts for the discrepancy. The committee took a snapshot on April 15th of new enrollees who hadn’t paid their first premium yet and found a payment rate of just 67 percent, well below the 80 percent figure that had been kicked around for months in the media. One minor problem, though: Because enrollment ended just a few weeks before, on March 31st, the snapshot on April 15th included people who had signed up just before the deadline but hadn’t even received their first bill from the insurance company yet. There are a lot of people like that out there; remember, there was an enormous spike in sign-ups in the days leading up to 3/31 as people tried to get coverage before the door was shut. Long story short, not all of the 33 percent who hadn’t paid yet on 4/15 were deadbeats past their due date. A great many of them were prepared to pay on time but were simply waiting for the bill to come due. Which means, as feared, the big “67 percent” bombshell just blew up in the committee’s face.

But wait, you say. The committee’s numbers were based on information they got from insurers. How can insurers now be claiming 80-90 percent payment when they told the committee it was 67 percent? Simple, says National Journal:

But this week, in written testimony to the same committee, insurers say the 67 percent figure was premature—and that they warned the committee not to draw sweeping conclusions from the information it requested…

Wellpoint, the largest insurer in the Obamacare exchanges, said the payment rate is closer to 90 percent among people who reached their first payment deadline. The company has given investors the same estimate.

Health Care Service Corp., which administers Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in several states, told the committee the same thing: Of plans that have reached their payment deadlines, about 80 percent to 90 percent are paid enrollments…

“As outlined in our prior submissions to the Subcommittee, these are dynamic figures and do not reflect final enrollment numbers, as some enrollees have not yet reached their payment,” Aetna said in written testimony for a Wednesday hearing on the health care law and the insurance industry.

The committee did mention in its press release announcing the 67 percent figure that they’d be updating their numbers on May 20 because “many insurers have reported that individuals will still have time to pay their first month’s premium.” But if they had reason to believe that insurers would end up meeting expectations — i.e. 80 percent payment or higher — when all is said and done, why put out a release touting the lower number in the first place? Just wait a few weeks until the final numbers are in and issue a release then.

Two theories for why the committee rushed this out. Theory one: Stupidity. If and when the final payment numbers are released and it’s confirmed that 10-20 percent of new enrollees, a.k.a. 800,000 to 1.6 million people, will be tossed from the rolls, the White House now has some handy spin. “Once again Republicans underestimated ObamaCare,” they’ll say. “They thought we’d top out at 67 percent payment and we made it to 80 percent. Another victory!” Always a bad idea to lower expectations for your opponent. Theory two: Cynicism. Maybe the committee suspects (correctly) that most people don’t follow the news consistently but get it in bits and pieces at irregular times, especially when it comes to a subject as complex and long-running as ObamaCare. As such, they may have decided to float the 67 percent figure knowing/assuming it was bogus but confident that some low-information voters would notice it and conclude that O-Care was underperforming in yet another metric. Some of those voters will miss today’s news and the White House crowing to come about the correct figure and remain convinced that fully a third of new enrollees haven’t paid.

Which theory is correct? While you ponder that, via the Standard, here’s a reminder that there are still plenty of bad metrics in ObamaCare worth highlighting.

Tags: enroll, enrollment, first month, insurance company, insurers, obama, ObamaCare, pay, premiums, sign up

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Sebelius:Oh,bytheway,insurerstellus

Sebelius: Oh, by the way, insurers tell us 10-20% of ObamaCare enrollees haven’t paid their premiums yet

posted at 6:41 pm on March 31, 2014 by Allahpundit

She’d happily tell you the official HHS number rather than rely on insurance company data if not for the small detail that HHS hasn’t built a payment system on Healthcare.gov yet. Upshot: Figure somewhere between 500,000 and 1.5 million “sign-ups” for ObamaCare are nonpayment cases who’ll sooner or later be bounced from the rolls.

She also told HuffPo today that they got a “Galfianakis bounce” from Obama’s appearance on that dopey Funny Or Die sketch. SNL had some fun with that this weekend — watch the second clip below to see — but Ace is right that the skit’s not as anti-O as some righties are making it out to be. At worst, it slaps him for being a bit too willing to indulge the dumbest impulses of the Kardashians’ fan base. But it’s all for a good cause and O himself is depicted as a reluctant panderer rather than a guy who’ll coopt anything, no matter how little it has to do with him, to get a little extra face time with his core constituencies.

Make sure to watch to the end of the first clip or else you’ll miss one of the more enjoyably awkward silent treatments captured on video in recent years.

News9.com – Oklahoma City, OK – News, Weather, Video and Sports |

Tags: Department of Health and Human Services, enrollment, pay, premiums, sebelius, sign ups

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Quotesoftheday postedat8:01

Quotes of the day

posted at 8:01 pm on December 29, 2013 by Allahpundit

As we continue our open enrollment campaign, we experienced a welcome surge in enrollment as millions of Americans seek access to affordable health care coverage through new Health Insurance Marketplaces nationwide. More than 1.1 million people enrolled in a qualified health plan via the Federally-facilitated Marketplace from October 1 to December 24, with more than 975,000 of those enrolling this month alone. Our HealthCare.gov enrollment nearly doubled in the days before the January 1 coverage deadline compared to the first few weeks of the month. December enrollment so far is over 7 times that of October and November. In part, this was because we met our marks on improving HealthCare.gov: the site supported 83,000 concurrent users on December 23rd alone.

***

While administration officials had said for months they would only release enrollment figures on a monthly basis once they launched HealthCare.gov, this marks the second time in a week and-a-half they have disclosed such details. On Dec. 20 President Obama announced in a news conference “more than 1 million Americans have selected new health insurance plans” on the state and federal level, with more than half of that coming from enrollments through HealthCare.gov…

At this point nearly 2 million Americans have signed up under the new health-care law so far on both state and federal marketplaces. Roughly 850,000 people have enrolled on the state level, according to Charles Gaba, a Web designer tracking health law enrollment numbers.

***

Whether this is good news depends a bit on the context you put it in. Obviously enrollment has spike dramatically in December. Just as the administration has predicted — and hoped — there was a rush to sign-up in December, right before the deadline to get coverage starting Jan. 1. Lots of these people weren’t first-time shoppers; many had started shopping in October and had been stymied by technical issues. Their December signup wasn’t a product of procrastination: It tended to have a lot more to do with the fact the website wouldn’t let them sign up earlier.

The administration had previously projected 3.3 million signups through the end of December, so 2 million obviously falls quite short of that. So while enrollment is increasing rapidly, the White House is still behind where it had expected to be at this point.

Most health policy experts would expect enrollment to level off, or even fall, in January and February, when shoppers aren’t facing an imminent deadline. But they do foresee a big increase at the end of March, right before open enrollment closes. These next three months will be pretty important for seeing whether the law hits the Congressional Budget Office projection of 7 million enrollees in 2014 — or, as it has in the first three months of enrollment, continues to fall short.

***

Scott Gottlieb, a critic of the Affordable Care Act and a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, a libertarian Washington think tank, said the numbers announced by the administration were “well behind” expectations.

“They only announced 1.1 million. They were at 900,000 December 22nd,” Mr. Gottlieb said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We haven’t seen the rush we thought we would see at the end of the year.”…

Mr. Gottlieb said the numbers might not pick up in the first months of 2014 either.

“The uninsured are not entering the exchanges because the plans are still expensive for them,” he said.

***

[T]he announcement, which came in the form of a blog post from CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner, left many key questions unanswered.

To start, the figure doesn’t reveal how many people actually paid for health plans as of Dec. 24. Though payment is what typically makes enrollment official, up to this point, CMS has counted people as being “enrolled” if they merely went through the process of picking a health care plan.

Additionally, CMS still hasn’t provided a demographic breakdown of those who have signed up for insurance through the exchange, which is a key metric for measuring the success of Obamacare, because the exchanges need a critical mass of young and healthy individuals to offset the cost of covering older and sicker enrollees and those with pre-existing conditions.

***

Tavenner said fixes to the website, which underwent a major overhaul to address widespread outages and glitches, contributed to December’s figures. But the problems haven’t totally disappeared. Thousands of people wound up waiting on hold for telephone help on Christmas Eve for a multitude of reasons, including technical difficulties…

But insurers have complained that another set of technical problems, largely hidden from consumers, has resulted in the government passing along inaccurate data on enrollees. The White House says the error rate has been significantly reduced. Yet with a flood of signups that must be processed in just days, it remains unclear whether last-minute enrollees will encounter a seamless experience if they try to use their new benefits come Jan. 1.

The political fallout from the website’s calamitous rollout could pale in comparison to the heat that Obama might take if Americans who signed up and paid their premiums arrive at the pharmacy or the emergency room and find there’s no record of their coverage.

***

If Democrats get their way, the next phase of the Obamacare wars will see something unusual: a flood of success stories.

The White House, Democratic lawmakers and advocacy organizations will launch a campaign this week to highlight real-life experiences under the Affordable Care Act — tales so compelling that they help drive up enrollment, marginalize Republican repeal efforts and erase memories of this fall’s HealthCare.gov debacle…

But the West Wing is still on edge. Aides who failed to detect the warning signs on HealthCare.gov are reluctant to say that they’ve got this next phase completely under control, aware that there could be issues they didn’t foresee.

***

Like thousands of other Americans, Munstock ran into technical problems with the federal Web site before managing to pick a health plan Dec. 1. He qualified for a federal subsidy to help him afford the insurance, so he has to pay just $87.57 a month toward his premium. After his welcome packet from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee arrived in the mail, Munstock was so eager to finish the process of enrolling and getting an insurance card that he picked up the phone to pay the first premium instead of using the mail.

“It felt really good,” he said. Paying toward his own insurance, he said, gives him “a certain dignity,” a feeling that he is not “one of the takers.” The next day, he called the doctor’s office. His appointment for a physical is Jan. 2.

“I’m feeling surprisingly moved by all of this,” Munstock said. “This finally seems real. And I’m thinking that maybe all the talk and the promises and the messy politics can actually lead to something good after all.”

***

Even with a boost in enrollment figures, serious trouble threatens the Obamacare horizon. There is the real prospect that when open enrollment comes around next summer, employers will start canceling employee health insurance — preferring to pay the penalty rather than cover the cost of plans with Obamacare-required standards. And the greatest danger to Obamacare itself is the imbalance in enrollees. An older, sicker population is signing up. Younger, healthier customers — who make the economics viable — have stayed away, turned off by website problems as well as concerns about the security of their personal information. Will the White House be forced into a taxpayer-subsidy of insurance companies to keep the whole thing afloat? Will premium costs rise to keep the whole thing afloat? Talk about political dynamite…

To truly appreciate the uneasiness among Senate Democrats, it pays to listen to West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, among the most outspoken Democrats calling for a delay in the health care law. Manchin worried out loud on CNN’s State of the Union last Sunday that the whole health care law could be headed for a “complete meltdown” if “it’s so much more expensive than what we anticipated, and if the coverage is not as good as what we’ve had.”

***

The enrollment figures may be well short of what the Obama administration had hoped for. But the fact that a significant number of Americans are now benefiting from the program is resulting in a subtle shift among Republicans.

“It’s no longer just a piece of paper that you can repeal and it goes away,” said Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin and a Tea Party favorite. “There’s something there. We have to recognize that reality. We have to deal with the people that are currently covered under Obamacare.”

And that underscores a central fact of American politics since Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act during the Depression: Once a benefit has been bestowed, it is nearly impossible to take it away.

***

Until Congress repeals ObamaCare, this is what health care will look like in America. Republicans will complain when Democrats jerk your health plan hence. Democrats will complain when Republicans jerk your health plan hither. Presidents from both parties will push the executive’s discretionary powers up to and beyond their lawful limits. Democratic and Republican presidents will “strongly encourage” insurers and health care providers to do things that no law requires, such as pay the medical bills of patients who have not paid a single premium, and the beholden insurers and providers will comply “voluntarily.” Republican and Democratic presidents will withhold information about their own performance, so there is no way to verify its own stellar self-assessments. Still, ObamaCare is definitely not a government takeover.

***

[O]ne of two things will happen in 2014. The first is that access to doctors will fall and the cost of care will go up for most Americans; Democrats will (gradually) realize they’ve been misled, and support for the law will collapse.

The second possibility is that access to doctors and the cost of care won’t change for most Americans; Republicans will (gradually) realize they’ve been misled, and the case against Obamacare will disintegrate for the average voter. Fear of that outcome may explain why Republican leaders have been so frantic in trying to undermine the law now — they’re afraid that once their base realizes the warnings about Obamacare were wrong, they will stop paying attention.

It seems almost unnecessary to note, a week before the law’s coverage provisions take effect, that the vast majority of Americans who get their insurance outside the exchanges won’t see any big difference in cost or in their ability to see their own doctor. Unnecessary, because whether you agree with me or not, we’re about to find out. All we know for sure is that somebody is wrong.

***

Tags: cancellation, Department of Health and Human Services, enrollment, healthcare.gov, obama, ObamaCare, pay, premiums, sign up, target

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Uhoh:Only5-15%ofenrolleeshavepaid

Uh oh: Only 5-15% of enrollees have paid their first month of premiums in some ObamaCare plans

posted at 12:11 pm on December 11, 2013 by Allahpundit

A good way to tell whether a media outlet is serious about ObamaCare reporting is to see if they cover this bombshell as a corollary to the new enrollment data. If 365,000 have “signed up” but only one-tenth of them, say, have paid their first month of premiums to activate their new coverage, how many people are really “enrolled” in ObamaCare plans right now?

Last week an insurer in Indiana told CNN that one of their plans had received payment from only 20 percent of people who signed up so far. According to Charles Ornstein’s sources, that insurer was doing relatively well.

“There is also a lot of worrying going on over people making payments,” industry consultant Robert Laszewski wrote in an email. “One client reports only 15% have paid so far. It is still too early to know for sure what this means but we should expect some enrollment slippage come the payment due date.”

Another consultant Kip Piper, agreed. “So far I’m hearing from health plans that around 5% and 10% of consumers who have made it through the data transfer gauntlet have paid first month’s premium and therefore truly enrolled,” he wrote me…

Blue Shield of California said it has sent out thousands of payment request letters…

While saying it is difficult to guess what will happen, Piper said he believes “a plan will be lucky if half of applicants pay first month’s premium on time for January coverage start but that perhaps three-quarters will pay in time for coverage start by February or March.”

My pal Karl pointed out on Twitter that Ezra Klein’s blog is describing the 365,000 sign-ups announced by HHS today as people who “have purchased private insurance.” Simply not true, and it’s no minor detail that it isn’t. Remember, per the CNN article last week, failing to pay by the deadline this month doesn’t necessarily mean that your coverage will take effect next month as soon as you finally pony up with your first premium. In some states, your enrollment is void if you don’t complete the purchase on time. That means you’ll have to re-enroll in January, which might be an easy process or might not be depending upon whether Healthcare.gov can handle the growing traffic load and whether insurers are buried under a mountain of backlogged applications, some of them with errors that require correction.

I’m frankly surprised that HHS hasn’t started ringing alarm bells about the nonpayment problem in order to try to mitigate it. I can only assume, as with so much else, that that’s a political decision made at the expense of a policy one. The more they start screaming about paying on time, the more the media will start focusing on this as the next landmine to detonate, replete with another look at how pricey some of America’s new “affordable” coverage is. Better to keep quiet, let people not pay, and then seek some form of “fix” next month in which HHS covers the first month of payments for new enrollees in return for repayment at a later date. Or maybe the easier fix would be for the King to proclaim that no enrollments will be voided in the event of nonpayment. They’ll simply be suspended until payment is tendered. That would reduce the logistical complexity of all this — a little — but I don’t know how insurers will replace the missing revenue in January from all those delayed premiums. Maybe that’s where Uncle Sam and “risk corridors” come in.

Elsewhere in ObamaCare chaos news, go read this USA Today report from Monday about how the new and allegedly improved Healthcare.gov is telling some people who make $80,000 a year that they qualify for Medicaid. When those people call the O-Care hotline, the operators tell them that whatever the website says must be correct. Will those poor saps be sprung from limbo in time to enroll before the deadline? Stay tuned.

Update: Sebelius was asked about this at today’s House hearing. Quote:

Burgess: What if that patient doesn’t make the premium payment? You said they’re covered Dec. 23, but they never write the check. They never make the payment.

Sebelius: Then they’re not covered. They are not enrolled, and at every point along the way, on the website they are told until they make the payment—

Tags: enrollment, exchange, obama, ObamaCare, ornstein, pay, premium

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Uhoh:WhiteHousemighthaveevenless

Uh oh: White House might have even less time than thought to repair Healthcare.gov

posted at 2:51 pm on November 18, 2013 by Allahpundit

A short but important post from Jeryl Bier at the Standard. To refresh your memory, the reason everyone from Obama to Sebelius to the rank-and-file on the “tech surge” team keeps babbling about fixing the website by the end of this month is because the deadline for signing up for insurance coverage is just two weeks later, on December 15th, if you want it to take effect at the beginning of the year. In a perfect world where the White House had some dim sense of what it was doing, the “young healthies” on whom O-Care’s fiscal stability depends would already be signing up en masse via Healthcare.gov. People who’ve had their plans canceled would, at least, now have the option of signing up on the website so that they don’t suffer a lapse of coverage in January, even if that means higher premiums. Obama would have spent the past month doing a nonstop publicity tour encouraging people to enroll before mid-December to make sure that they have insurance on 1/1. In the world we actually live in, where the president supposedly didn’t find out that the federal insurance exchange was a smoking crater until after it went live on October 1st, virtually no one’s been able to enroll in an exchange plan yet. If — if — the website can be repaired by November 30th, that’ll give the White House two weeks at least to warn people that they need to enroll immediately if they want their new coverage in effect on New Year’s Day. It ain’t much, but it’s something.

But what if that’s all wrong? What if signing up for coverage by December 15th doesn’t by itself ensure that your new plan takes effect on January 1st? In fact, says Bier, in order to be covered at the start of 2014, not only do you need to sign up by 12/15 but you need to pay your first premium too. And, like everything else, that’s not easy to do on Healthcare.gov.

TWS: If I don’t pick a plan until 12/15, won’t it be too late for my info to go to the insurance company, them to bill me, and me to make a payment by 12/21? Seems pretty tight.

[Healthcare.gov] Rep: You must make your first premium payment by 12/15/13 for your coverage to begin January 1, 2014. If you make your payment by the 21st, your coverage will begin in February 1, 2014.

TWS: You said above “It may give you that option” to pay on healthcare.gov. Does that mean it’s not available yet?

Rep: We are still experiencing some technical difficulties with the website, which is why it would be best to possibly go through the insurance company to make your first premium payment.

How many members of the “five percent” (the actual number is likely higher) will have enough cash available in a pinch — right before Christmas, mind you — to pony up that surprise first premium on time? How many “young healthies,” having enrolled on the site, will somehow have it slip their mind that they need to contact their insurer separately to arrange payment by the deadline? How many users of Healthcare.gov, thinking that they’ll be covered on January 1, won’t even realize that they’ve only completed half the process to make that happen? This is yet another landmine for O-Care buried on the 2014 calendar: Some segment of the population, wrongly thinking that their coverage is in effect, will go to the doctor in January only to find that they missed the payment deadline. Note to all bros in Colorado: No keg stands until February.

By the way, the White House’s new hope for Healthcare.gov is that it’ll be able to handle 80 percent of users by December 1st. That’d be ridiculous for any private commercial website, but it’s a moral victory as a salvage operation for a site built by a team whose ostensible leader eagerly reminds the media that he didn’t know much about it until it was too late. Exit quotation: “People don’t like to tell him bad news.”

Tags: deadline, healthcare.gov, insurer, obama, ObamaCare, pay, premiums

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Source from: hotair