The March 31 deadline to enroll in health insurance is coming! Half of uninsured people want to remain uninsured, according to a poll released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Are you one of those people? Then we recommend pledging support for direct care.
Tag Archives: enrollment
March 27, 2014
March 12, 2014
March 3, 2014
Stephen Colbert Goes Where No Direct Care Patient Has To — Healthcare.gov
You have to love a good healthcare satire. Watch Stephen Colbert try to sign up for insurance on healthcare.gov on The Colbert Report. As an Obamacare “navigator” tries to help him through the process, Colbert makes the situation very uncomfortable when he jokes about getting “actual” care. Of course, as you know, the time-consuming nature of Obamacare enrollment is a prime example of red tape. And, as this sketch indicates, the way our administration fixes red tape, is with more of it, i.e. paid government employees known as “navigators.” Thankfully, here at Atlas MD, we don’t have to hire a team of people to help our patients sign up.
SPOILER ALERT: After a gruesomely awkward incident, Colbert finally finishes entering his information, only to find out the webpage he needs… doesn’t exist.
November 14, 2013
So Who’s Actually Enrolled Through The ACA Exchanges
UPDATE: Here’s an article fact checking the White House administration’s announcement about Obamacare enrollment as of Nov. 13 2013. The Washington Post refers to their press release as making lemonade out of lemons. They issued the information a rating of One Pinocchio. In their Four Pinocchio rating system, this equates to — “Some shading of the facts. Selective telling of the truth. Some omissions and exaggerations, but no outright falsehoods.” As we mentioned, our web registration is currently running without a hitch.
Here’s the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ first state-by-state report. It came out on Wednesday and details all of the people who have enrolled in its federal health insurance exchanges.
We’re noticing a lot of our supporters echo our concern with the new reform. But we also like our supporters to have the most up to date facts. Looking at these numbers, there are people who have signed up. We can’t just go around mocking the poorly functioning site. The reason is that this keeps us from focusing on the more impending concern—will anyone actually be able to use this insurance to see a doctor?
And also, what’s going to happen to all the overburdened primary care doctors?
November 13, 2013
The Atlantic Says, Healthcare.gov Tech ‘Surge’ Might Miss Its Deadline
This new post from the Atlantic is worth a read. The deadline for Obamacare enrollment is creeping up on us. Are Americans going to be able to wrap themselves in double-thick red tape? Who knows? However, this piece brought something else to our attention–the law surrounding pre-existing conditions.
Patients who have a pre-existing condition must sign up for an exchange plan by the end of the year (Jan. 1, 2014) in order to qualify for the unmodified fees.
As you know, we take a somewhat unbiased approach to the exchange. Yes, we think it might be one step forward, two steps back, but we’ve said it many times–if Americans can get more affordable wrap-around coverage, excellent. Only problem now is that people with obesity, diabetes, cancers and other serious conditions will only have a tiny window of opportunity to find an approved plan. And being as healthcare.gov is comfortably dysfunctional, this isn’t looking good.
And not to use fear tactics, but the fact is that many doctors don’t want to accept the exchange plans because of concern they themselves won’t be fairly compensated. This makes for an unfortunate conundrum: If someone has diabetes, they are A) running out of time to get fairly priced insurance and B) if they do acquire it, doctors might not accept it.
October 10, 2013
More Red Tape, More Problems…
Bloomberg.com followed up on the Obamacare sign-up fiasco. Depending on the source, it might sound like Armageddon or a minor rain shower. Regardless, a program this large was guaranteed to hiccup. However, this hiccup is relevant. Patients who have actually completed their portion of enrollment, and submitted information to the exchange and opted for a plan, are facing a red tape problem — their electronic files are inaccessible or incomplete, thereby stymying insurance processing. Insurers are throwing their hands in the air, saying they can’t do anything, and leaving the subscribers out to dry. It gets worse. These participants might not be technically “insured” come January 1, 2014, and could face a fine.
So what’s the take away? More red tape, more problems.
READ BLOOMBERG’S FOLLOW UP ON OBAMACARE ENROLLMENT
These are the types of bureaucratic headaches that our Atlas.md EMR software was built to avoid. Great news, the free beta version of our software just launched. You can sign up here.