Health Care changes

Even as President Obama has issued a constant refrain of how upset he is that his Obamacare website doesn't work and promises that he's on top of the fix, three 20-year-old website designers in San Francisco made a working Obamacare website using Healthcare.gov's own code. They did it in only three days...

Fox's Misleading HealthCare.Gov Comparison Disputed By Actual Web Developers

November 18, 2013 1:03 PM EST ››› MICHELLE LEUNG

Fox News misleadingly compared the Affordable Care Act's HealthCare.gov to private website HealthSherpa.com, despite the fact that the programmers previously explained to Fox this was not an "apples to apples comparison."

In response to the troubled rollout of the federal HealthCare.gov, three private programmers recently created HeatlhSherpa.com, a site which shows some health insurance plans available through the new health care law's exchanges, based on a person's zip code, income, and family size. The site does not allow users to purchase insurance, does not verify citizenship, and can only estimate tax breaks and subsidies that users might be eligible for, all functions of the HealthCare.gov website that make purchasing an insurance policy possible.

On the November 18 edition of Fox & Friends, Fox News host Elisabeth Hasselbeck ignored many of these differences in the websites' functionality to claim HealthSherpa.com was a "working healthcare website" and implied it was a preferable alternative to the "failed HealthCare.gov website." Hasselbeck interviewed Michael Wasser, one of the founders of HealthSherpa.com, who explained some of the functional differences between his site and the federal health care website.

Bill Elliot came forward with his story in the beginning of November, when the Obamacare stories were beginning to shift from the website debacle to the personal stories of the many people who were losing their individual plans, and could not afford a new one. Bill Elliot told his story to Megyn Kelly of Fox News, which was, in short, he is a cancer patient who was going to be losing his insurance coverage in the middle of treatment. After initially investigating his insurance options, he made the decision to simply pay the penalty and stop treatment in order not to bankrupt his family.

After hearing that story, C. Steven Tucker, an insurance broker, got in touch with Mr. Elliot. As a result of Mr. Tucker’s work, Bill Elliot was going to be able to keep his old insurance policy, much to his relief. Mr. Tucker talks about the experience on his own blog (emphasis from the original):

So, all is well that ends well, right? A happy ending! An insurance plan reinstated and a man’s life potentially saved!

Well, not so much. For while the good news from Mr. Tucker (who has been faithfully updating his original post with new developments) is that Mr. Elliott is currently in remission, but he is now being audited by the IRS, who want to go all the way back to 2009. And to make sure that no good deed goes unpunished, C. Steven Tucker is ALSO being audited – all the way back to 2003.

That is simply too much of a coincidence to actually be one.

The White House is embarrassed by all these stories. They are constantly trying to find success stories of their own to prop up, but even those have fallen apart as more time has passed, as in the case of Washington state resident Jessica Sanford, who President Obama himself touted at his Rose Garden press conference back in October. So here is a story of a man who would literally die without his health insurance, being interviewed on the “evil” Fox News, making trouble with the facts of his own situation. And he just “randomly” comes up for an audit after being interviewed on national television???

Oh, and let’s not forget Mr. Tucker, who was trying to help. He deprived the administration of being able to ride in and save the day, and kept them from turning their PR nightmare into a fairy tale where the president comes in to make a few phone calls and saves a man’s life. So, punish him for being helpful.

3 20 yr olds, 3 days in their off time and a perfectly working website for the ACA..

I feel that way everytime we wind up going to war with a country.

Or drive on a freeway.

Or call 911 and have the fire department arrive.

Or go to a local park.

Or safely fly on a plane.

Socialism. It's all Socialism, dammit!

We the People WILL have social.ism because the people touting selfishness are a tiny minority.

Safely flying on a plane & going to war with other countries are 'local examples'? Ummm...no.

I am for socialized health care.

Gov't takes my tax dollars and 'redistributes that wealth' to many functions that don't directly benefit me. Or worse, this happens towards functions that I don't support at all.

do you suppose I'd find you commenting on how much you support a SP system? I'm not gonna hold my breath.

"Socialism" is government ownership of the Means of Production.

The word Socialism to most people refers to Hitler's Germany.