First, apologies to my readers for the diversion from the usual fare, but I’ll point out that this entry is covered under the masthead in the category of “recent news” and there’s a relevant WUWT category.
Since like many of you, I’ve been forced to sign a document (at my radio station where I employed part-time) that confirms I’ve been given another document that advises me of my Obamacare rights, and of course being in tune to the news, I’ve been wondering if the claims about the Obamacare websites are as bad as claimed.
I read an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune “Sebelius visit fails to reassure as health care website glitches persist” that said:
Sebelius, who is making similar trips to cities across the country to spread the word about the website, told the audience of about 100 people that Healthcare.gov was “open for business.”
“Believe me, we had some early glitches,” said Sebelius, who was introduced by Rooney, a backer of the law. “But it’s getting better every day.”
So, I decided to find out myself. I went to http://healthcare.gov and chose my state, California. What follows is a record of what I actually got. I never made it past step 1:
Try it yourself: https://coveredca.com/shopandcompare/
NOTE: To be accurate, the website security certificate will work if the “www” is used as prefix, but not the link above sans www. By following the link from the Tribune article, with no other changes on my part, I ended up with the sans “www” connection, which they didn’t get a proper security certificate for. One wonders how many other “glitches” exist in basic security on these websites.
Even when you go in with the “www” there are problems. In Firefox I get this:
UPDATE: Reader Ben points out that it gets a failing grade from an SSL grading service, SSL Labs:
Source: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=coveredca.com
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Good to read a robust defence of America and its role in bailing out Britain at the onset of WW2. Far too many Brits fail to realise the truth, without US help from the early days we would have lost, victory in the Battle of Britain, great though this was merely brought time, a delaying of the end that would have come by the U-Boat.
Elsewhere there are informative comments about the government situation in the US and the role of President Obama. The adoration of European media for this man distort the realities of the circumstances over there, I appreciate all those who have contributed to this debate.
dbstealey says (October 13, 2013 at 5:09 pm): “Regarding the web page fiasco: I find it hard to believe that this is not deliberate.”
Here’s someone who agrees with you:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/14/obamacares-website-is-crashing-because-it-doesnt-want-you-to-know-health-plans-true-costs/?partner=yahootix
Gdn and milodonharlani:
Sincere thanks for your comments at October 14, 2013 at 6:28 pm and October 14, 2013 at 6:54 pm, respectively, which inform about the present US Government ‘freeze’.
I have read your writings and learned. Thankyou. As feedback I make two observations.
Firstly, the failure of your President to provide budgets despite his Constitutional Duty to do so suggests the written Constitution of your country is not as powerful as I – and probably most non-Americans – had thought.
Secondly, I admit to some shock at the closure of War Memorials. Clearly, the cultural differences between Brits and Americans are greater than I thought.
As follow-on from that latter feedback I make one response to the comments of milodonharlani (at October 14, 2013 at 5:43 pm) and Barry Sheridan (at October 15, 2013 at 12:58 am). I do not intend to side-track this thread onto irrelevancies about WW2, and I will not, but among several good points those comments contain some very distorted ideas. For example, the “support” of the UK when we stood alone against the Naz1s was great from some individual Americans (e.g. the Eagle Squadron in the RAF) but there was not then the magnanimous support from the US government which you seem to think: it is now less than a decade since the UK completed its payments to the US for ‘Lease Lend”. The UK ended that war bankrupted but the US grew richer during that war. And after that war US Marshall Aid was targeted at countries in mainland Europe, not the UK.
Anyway, I am genuinely grateful for the information you have provided, and I feel sure that others learned from it, too.
Richard
“The Constitution not as powerful as I has thought”.
The Constitution is the law of the land. It’s funny how we are told “Too bad, there’s no stopping Obamacare: it’s the law of the land” by people who routinely approve of the failure of the President to adhere to the law of the land.
Whether or not you agree with socialized medicine, you must admit that such brazen hypocrisy is not only offensive, but raises questions as to motives.
“Secondly, I admit to some shock at the closure of War Memorials. Clearly, the cultural differences between Brits and Americans are greater than I thought.”
I’m not sure as to how you intend that. It is a big thing here. Various charitable groups regularly fly small groups of WWII veterans to the war memorial, and they’ve arrived to barricades at an open-air memorial which is normally open 24*7*365, with no park service manning. After a couple days of people moving the barricades, and the NPS chasing them out every few hours and putting the barricades back, the NPS showed up with police dogs to deter entry. Members of both parties Congressmen and Senators began showing up to guide the veterans through, so the police dogs appear to have stopped after that. Since then there have been large daily protests including ones where people, including leg less veterans, carry the barricades to the White House and dump them there…and every night the NPS and/or Capitol Police take them back and set them up again.
Gdn:
I again owe you thanks this time for your post at October 15, 2013 at 5:52 am.
This stood out for me. Concerning the closure of the War Memorials you wrote
Whatever our differences, I hope we can agree that is as it should be.
Richard
There’s a slightly different error if you go to coveredca.com now:
————————————————————————————
Secure Connection Failed
An error occurred during a connection to coveredca.com. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length. (Error code: ssl_error_rx_record_too_long)
Excellent testing, as may have been expected.
We should all have great confidence that the medical records system will be equally well designed and implemented.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Jones. Your hysterectomy will begin shortly”.
@Dave A: “Helping your fellow man through voting for a Government and President who enact a law to assist those who cannot gain medical treatment in your Country get that medical treatment is…. Slavery. It’s so clear now. Why haven’t I seen it like that before?”
Every US citizen can already get the medical treatment he/she can afford – how much that is however depends on how much the citizen earns, which in turn depends on his/her industriousness, intelligence and other factors that determine the quality and value of a human being. What Obama (and the Socialists) want us to believe is that those that are too lazy, too stupid or too plain dishonest to earn their own money should nevertheless be taken care for so that they live long, have families, consume goods etc. even though they are not willing or not able to do their share. I call that “breeding parasites” and it’s what has brought all the Socialist countries down, currently is bringing the EU down, and soon will bring the US down. The trouble is that even after the removal of the corrupt governments that caused this development, the hordes of lazy, stupid and greedy individuals remain, and they probably won’t change their ways unless physically forced to – which conveniently has been outlawed as well…
If anything, receiving medical treatment, like receiving welfare payments and other subsidies should be made ever so much more difficult than it is today. Those who will suffer and eventually die will be those whose life was not worth living anyhow.
Yes, I am proud to say I do NOT have medical or life insurance, have NOT received a penny in government subsidies in my life, and will NOT become a beggar when I’m no longer fit to earn my living, because I then will have lost my right to live. This insight is sadly lacking from today’s education. Nobody is ashamed any more to be poor “thanks” to centuries of brainwashing by Socialists and religiose [sic] organizations; the Great Unwashed are flooding the world and demand that their inferiority is ignored (they even got the UN to declare this back in 1949). The grotesque theory of “Inalienable Human Rights” is beginning to bog down humanity because of the ever-increasing number of dependent “humans” that have to be fed by less and less productive HUMANS.
Guys, I’m sure this must be a fuss over nothing — our ABC prime time news in Australia tells us that the Republicans are making big deal over Obamacare, but that Americans in the street really don’t have strong feelings either way…
Between the lines it’s clear it’s the Republicans fault and that this will not work out well for them.
/sarc
Yes, I was a bit surprised too.
Thorsten says (October 15, 2013 at 9:06 am): [snip]
http://www.westernjournalism.com/dr-ben-carson-obamacare-worst-thing-since-slavery/
richardscourtney says:
October 15, 2013 at 3:28 am
You are right that having a written Constitution sometimes doesn’t stop a President from violating it. In the past they’ve ignored the Supreme Court & Congress. Obama has been ruling extra-constitutionally since 2009, in many ways besides not submitting a budget. But with control of either House of Congress, he can’t be impeached or convicted.
Surely the issue with Lend Lease is not that it was paid off by 2006, but that when given it kept the UK from being defeated by Germany. Without not only the LL ships & the sacrifices of US merchant seamen & sailors, Britain would have been starved into surrender. The Royal Navy would have been out of combat without the US East Coast shipyards where its capital ships could safely be repaired from horrific battle damage. Also, it wasn’t just the hundreds of US aviators who helped win the Battle of Britain, but the high octane aviation fuel we supplied, which gave Spitfires an advantage over Me-109s. Ask any veteran of North Africa what difference the US tanks & planes made there. (The Warden of Rhodes House, aka Rodent of Ward’s House, when I was up at Oxford had been Monty’s staff intel officer, G-2 in US parlance.)
IMO castigating America for not helping Britain more in 1939-41 is not only churlish but factually incorrect. Same goes for after the war. Your statement about the Marshal Plan is not only false, but wildly so. In fact, Britain received over a third more Marshal Plan funds than did Germany:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/marshall_01.shtml
The ingratitude & anti-American defamation of the British Left are ugly, made more so by the fact that socialists were the main pacifists & appeasers who let fascism flourish on the continent between the wars (as indicated by my “King & Country” debate reference), although obviously Tories of Baldwin & Chamberlain’s ilk also gun-shy & eager for “peace”. The fact remains that out-of-power Tories like Churchill were the group sounding the alarm against Hitler & Mussolini (although not against Franco). Had their warnings been heeded, Europe could have dealt with fascism without America once again coming to its aid with millions of men & billions in materiel.
We also helped fight the Nazis before Dec 1941 by extending Lend Lease to the USSR after Hitler invaded his former ally in the war against Poland, Norway, Denmark, France, the Low Countries & Britain.
milodonharlani says:
October 15, 2013 at 11:28 am
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__________________________
milodonharlani, your remarks are timely and correct. Some Brits think that they can openly castigate the US or its citizens. They’ve been called out about their disparaging remarks against us in these pages and we’ve then watched as they claim that their insult was misunderstood because it was out of context, or some such. I’m glad to see that you aren’t going to let them get by with it, either.
In response to Richard Courtney @ur momisugly October 15, 2013 at 3:28 am.
Within the frame of a few words it is obviously impossible to satisfy every angle with regard to US support for Britain in 1939-40. However I do feel it is overly strong to suggest that these comments contained distortions.
Let me expand this just a little, early supplies of US material to allow the war to be fought had to be paid for, the US demanded and received payment for what it supplied to aid Britain and its meagre forces when they faced Germany alone in 1940-41. However Britain soon exhausted its ability to pay and it was then the generosity of the US nation, initially via various mutually convenient deals that eventually gave way to the Lend Lease programme that supplied enough to sustain the nation until the US entered the war on Britain’s side. Prior to this formal declaration, by Germany on 11th December 1941, US forces had been giving increasing naval support to the convoys, allowing a hard pressed Royal Navy to struggle on.
The primary instigator of these arrangements was Winston Churchill, His carefully crafted diplomacy being based on the recognition that from the very beginning Britain could not sustain itself without US support. It was fortunate that President Roosevelt was instinctively receptive to his overtures, his leadership was crucial during this perilous period in helping overcome considerable US misgivings.
While Richard you are correct in stating that Britain has only recently discharged its obligation for certain parts of this help, the bulk of these payments were in response to large post-war loans made at very favourable rates, monies Britain desperately required at the time Much of the material supplied under the Lend Lease programme was returned under the terms of the agreement without heavy charges being levied on the exchequer.
Alan Robertson says:
October 15, 2013 at 12:03 pm
Barry Sheridan says:
October 15, 2013 at 1:15 pm
No further evidence is needed that the US saved Britain from defeat by Hitler before Dec 1941 than Churchill’s own words & deeds at the time. FDR ran for an unprecedented third term in 1940 by campaigning to keep the US out of the European war, then promptly reneged on those promises. He wanted to get involved from the start, & then even his communist advisers joined him after Hitler invaded his former ally the USSR in June 1941.
So as soon as he was re-inaugurated in Jan ’41, he rammed LL through Congress (HR 1776), passed in March:
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=71
“In July 1940, after Britain had sustained the loss of 11 destroyers to the German Navy over a 10-day period, newly elected British Prime Minister Winston Churchill requested help from President Roosevelt. Roosevelt responded by exchanging 50 destroyers for 99-year leases on British bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland. As a result, a major foreign policy debate erupted over whether the United States should aid Great Britain or maintain strict neutrality.”
FDR had to show something to the isolationist American people in exchange for siding with Britain & ending neutrality. He said any American would lend a neighbor a hose to fight a fire, but the problem was, a great many citizens of Irish, German & other non-British ancestries or of communist or fellow-traveler ideology (until June ’41) didn’t want us to support the British Empire or Commonwealth. The German grandfather of a classmate of mine had wept after Dunkirk.
Again apologies for continuing a probably off-topic thread.
milodonharlani says (October 15, 2013 at 1:38 pm): “No further evidence is needed that the US saved Britain from defeat by Hitler before Dec 1941 than Churchill’s own words & deeds at the time.”
Just to add some perspective, from mid-1941 the UK’s biggest ally was probably the Soviet Union, not the US. The USSR tied down some 80% of the German army in 1941-42, and forced Hitler to reduce the production priority of U-boats in favor of land/air armaments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)#Forces
Of course the Soviet Union was Hitler’s ally before it was Churchill’s ally, so it was partly responsible for Germany’s early successes and suffered most of the consequences.
“Barry-cades” buffaloed!
http://www.ijreview.com/2013/10/87184-watch-wyoming-bison-knock-government-shutdown-barrycade/
Gary Hladik says:
October 15, 2013 at 6:23 pm
After abandoning Operation Sea Lion, Germany’s army no longer immediately threatened Britain, so Hitler’s invasion of the USSR didn’t really help the UK in that way much. Changes in strategic priorities in industry may have helped Britain a little, as did sending much of the Luftwaffe east, but that was offset by US Lend Lease & aid from the UK itself being sent NE to Murmansk, much of which was lost en route.
Arguably from Sept ’41, when US LL aid switched from concentrating on Britain to the helping USSR, the UK suffered a net loss of allied support. But IMO the key fact is that Britain would have lost the critical Battle of the Atlantic in 1940-41, after Hitler overran France, without US aid, & thereby lost the war.
milodonharlani says (October 15, 2013 at 6:42 pm): “After abandoning Operation Sea Lion, Germany’s army no longer immediately threatened Britain…”
Except in the Mediterranean, where the UK could have lost Malta, the Suez Canal, and possibly Gibraltar in 1941, had Hitler not invaded the Soviet Union. In fact the Middle East, with all its oil, could have fallen to Hitler. The Luftwaffe, of course, would have immediately threatened Britain.
“Arguably from Sept ’41, when US LL aid switched from concentrating on Britain to the helping USSR, the UK suffered a net loss of allied support.”
Which only emphasizes the importance of the USSR to the UK’s survival, right? Otherwise why waste blood and treasure on such a “minor” distraction of German forces when Britain itself is in danger?
“But IMO the key fact is that Britain would have lost the critical Battle of the Atlantic in 1940-41, after Hitler overran France, without US aid, & thereby lost the war.”
The UK may very well have been starved out in late 1940 without US aid. In 1941, when Hitler was preparing and then executing the invasion of the USSR, the UK may have been starved out without US aid and German diversion of resources to the East. Even with most of Germany’s war effort directed against the USSR, the war against the U-boats wasn’t won until early 1943.
From mid-’41 on, the USSR alone absorbed 60-80% of the German war effort, so its value as a British ally from then to mid-’45 is obvious, yet often forgotten here in the West.
Gary Hladik says:
October 15, 2013 at 8:31 pm
The UK may very well have been starved out in late 1940 without US aid. In 1941, when Hitler was preparing and then executing the invasion of the USSR, the UK may have been starved out without US aid and German diversion of resources to the East. Even with most of Germany’s war effort directed against the USSR, the war against the U-boats wasn’t won until early 1943.
_____________________________
My uncle served in the US Navy as a signalman aboard merchant ships throughout the war. His only assignments were aboard tankers and munitions carriers. He watched as the wolf packs tore through a generation. He and his fellow sailors were immersed in dread and fear for days at a time and grew old with the terror woven through their dreams.
My uncle’s instructor at Signalman school was none other than the actor, Henry Fonda.
Gary Hladik says:
October 15, 2013 at 8:31 pm
It works both ways. Without also having to fight the US & UK, Hitler would have defeated Stalin. Moscow would have fallen in 1941 had Stalin’s spy Sorge not told his master that Japan was going to attack the US rather than the USSR, allowing the Red Army to transfer Siberian divisions west to the defense of the capital. For starters. Then among other supports before D-Day, there was the invasion of Sicily, which forced Hitler to call off Citadel, the Kursk operation. D-Day itself made possible the great success of Soviet Operation Bagration, the Belarussian offensive.
The Western Allied strategic bombing offensive kept the Luftwaffe over Germany instead of Russia, & 10,000 88mm anti-aircraft guns in the homeland, too, which could have instead been killing Soviet T-34 tanks. They had only that many left at the end of the war, & the usual exchange ratio was one gun for one tank. The 10,000 Shermans we sent them made the difference. They were more vulnerable than T-34s but mechanically reliable & had radios.
US Lend Lease & other aid to the USSR also enabled the Red Army to advance from the Volga to the Elbe. Khrushchev rightly told Ike that without our trucks, they couldn’t have made it. Not to mention radios, radar, food, boots, steel, fuel, planes & tanks. We gave the USSR so much that shortages hampered our own advance from the Channel & Med to the Elbe.
And right now…
“We’re sorry for the inconvenience. We are performing a scheduled maintenance of the Covered California website from Tuesday night, October 15th, at 9:30 pm until Wednesday morning at 6:00 am.”
Must be nice to have a 8-1/2 hour downtime window so soon after premiering.
milodonharlani says:
October 16, 2013 at 10:02 am
Yes, and in addition to all that you’ve mentioned, there is very much more:
Major Jordan’s Diaries
Spoiler: Through Lend Lease, we gave the USSR not only our atomic secrets, but also treasury plates for U.S. currency.
Read it, and weep.
Beyond that, and without straying much further off topic, the standard retelling of WWII does not reflect what really happened. Can anyone truly believe that the organized, highly efficient Germans were planning war with the Soviet Union while possessing neither long range bombers, nor even winter coats?
Back on topic:
I wonder what roles greed, price gouging, and the growth of the medical bureaucracy have played in today’s nearly out-of-control medical costs, for even a short hospital stay?
@Steve P says: October 16, 2013 at 11:19 am
“roles greed, price gouging, and the growth of the medical bureaucracy ”
Obviously considerable. The payer is not the consumer, and this causes dysfunctional market dynamics: The doctors charge lots of money (partly because their malpractice insurance premiums are so high, partly because they have to hire an army of clerks to process the paperwork from the government and the insurance companies, and partly because they feel they need to be highly rewarded for their work). The insurance companies pay it, because they can just endlessly increase premiums and profit margins. Nobody cares about keeping the cost down, except the consumer, who is powerless in this relationship because they are not organized in such a way as to be able to coordinate any effective action. It doesn’t take a very profound understanding of human nature to see that this is exactly how you would set it up if you wanted an upward-spiral in costs.
On the other hand, look at medical services that are generally not covered by insurance. Laser eye surgery for correcting vision (e.g. Lasik) is an example. It’s gotten cheaper and better, because the supply side is fragemented enough to invite competition.
O’BamaCide was exactly the wrong way to go because it inserts a rapacious bureaucracy into the equation. In general, government can never, ever provide innovation (including price decreases) in products or services simply because the competitive forces that drive suppliers to innovate are not present.
When pointing to massive, government-driven projects such as atomic bombs or moon shots as examples of government “innovation”, it must be remembered that those projects were essentially funded with vast — arguably inexhaustible — resources, and in an era that was, surprisingly, much less materialistic and venal: People actually believed in doing things right without necessarily trying to engage in no-holds-barred rent-seeking. While there are still such people today, it’s the rent-seekers who have infested virtually every corner of the government, and so I argue that projects on the scale of atom bombs and moonshots would not be as achievable today as they were 40 or 50 years ago.
Having a large, complex bureaucracy with a corrupt government at the helm is a recipe for a plundered treasury. Even the relatively tiny “green energy” program was virtually 100% corrupt. Already stories of huge frauds related to O’BamaCide are starting to get out, despite the best efforts of the mainstream media to suppress them.
If you think greed, price gouging, and the growth of the medical bureaucracy were features of the “old” medical-care industry in the US, you ain’t seen NOTHIN’ yet!
I’m VERY late to the party here.
To the British and Canadians here suggesting that socialized medicine (Obamacare) is like suggesting to someone in the US that Social Security is bad. Both are defended, not because they are “good” but because that is what they are used to and they and their parents have paid into it for so long. They want the “security” they were promised and paid for.
Bureaucracies administer such things.
What part of national debts are for such social programs? What do such social programs lead people to depend on? God? Family? Themselves? Government?
You can’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Here in the US many of us just want to cut off the hand before we have to depend on it.
Why else did the Dems loose so big in the last election?
PS Tax and spend bills, including budgets, in the US Constitution can only originate in the House. Originally The House represented the individuals who actually would have to pay the bills. Too much has changed, been amended, since then.
Steve P says:
October 16, 2013 at 11:19 am
FDR’s stooge Hopkins was a Soviet agent, long suspected & now found guilty.
The lack of German preparations for the invasion of the USSR convinced Stalin that Hitler wasn’t planning on attacking, when in fact he was. Stalin of course was planning on attacking Hitler, but not until 1942. That’s why his forces were so badly deployed, far too close to the border. The only person Stalin trusted was Hitler, but the German dictator beat him to the draw.
All the ills of our health care system will be made worse by Obamacare. You left personal injury lawyers off your list, unless they fall under “greed”.
Sigh…Typo
“To the British and Canadians here suggesting that socialized medicine (Obamacare) is like suggesting to someone in the US that Social Security is bad.”
Should be:
“To the British and Canadians here suggesting that socialized medicine (Obamacare) is bad is like suggesting to someone in the US that Social Security is bad.