Costs of ObamaCare bungles start to add up, with Maryland first at about $30.5M

Maryland could end up spending as much as $30.5 million as a result of a glitch in its ObamaCare website, as the Obama administration steps in to help states with problematic exchanges.
Because of Maryland’s defective exchange, the state cannot determine whether customers remain eligible for Medicaid, according to a report by state budget analysts released Thursday.
As a result, the state has agreed with the federal government to a six-month delay in determining eligibility, meaning that payments will continue to be made to customers who are not eligible until the system is fixed. The delay will cost the state $17.8 million in fiscal 2014 and $12.7 million in fiscal 2015, the analysts estimated.
On Friday, the Obama administration said it would suspend some Affordable Care Act rules to help the 14 states with their own ObamaCare sites, particularly Maryland, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Oregon, which have had the most problems.
The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plan, completed a day earlier, states the federal government will help pay for “qualified” health-insurance plans for customers in those states who because of “exceptional circumstances” had to buy plans outside of ObamaCare exchanges, as reported first by The Washington Post.
The administration made the change before the end-of-March deadline for Americans to enroll in ObamaCare this year.
In Maryland, the exchange cannot convert income data from the existing Medicaid enrollment system into a calculation needed to review whether enrollees are qualified “because of a variety of system architectural flaws,” according to budge analysts.
The exchange has been plagued by computer problems that have made it difficult for people to enroll in private health care plans since its debut Oct. 1.
State officials have decided to stick with the exchange through the open enrollment period that ends March 31 but is evaluating alternatives with an eye toward the next enrollment period that begins in November.
Among the possibilities is adopting technology developed by another state, joining a consortium of other states, partnering with the federal exchange or making major fixes to the existing system.
Thirty-six states use the federal HealthCare.gov site, which crashed and had other major problems in the first two months of enrollment.
The Maryland report said the state may need to develop an interim solution while a long-term solution is being developed. However, that process would likely take at least nine to 12 months, pushing up against the next open-enrollment period.
The report also states the development of the exchange was “a high risk undertaking” from the outset, in large part because of contractors woes, tight deadlines, constantly evolving requirement and its need to interface with work-in-progress federal databases.
The administration changes this week are not the first to ObamaCare, to be sure.
In November, Obama helped Americans about to lose policies because they didn’t meet new minimum requirements by allow the substandard plans to be sold through the end of this year.
And administration officials has twice this year given medium- and large-sized employers more time to offer health insurance to most full-time workers.
However, the change this week is significant because it marks the first the time the federal government has agreed to help pay for policies bought outside the new exchanges.
The coverage in the outside policies would have to be comparable to those offered on the exchange. And customers would have to start paying premiums, then get the subsidies after the state exchanges could determine their income eligibility.
Maryland Health Benefit Exchange official told The Post earlier this week that roughly 7,000 applications are stuck in state’s system, but all of them might not need insurance and that officials were still looking over the administration’s offer.

Real people with real problems refute Reid's claim ObamaCare 'horror stories' untrue

Despite Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's claim earlier this week that ObamaCare "horror stories" weren't true, there are plenty of real people out there with real problems.
Reid managed to ignite a firestorm when he accused those who complain about canceled policies and higher rates under ObamaCare of flat-out lying.
"There's plenty of horror stories being told,” he said. “All of them are untrue, but they're being told all over America."
Tell that to Linda Deright, who told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto,"There must be six million of us, then. I think we should just call ourselves the liars' club."
Tom Gialanella of Seattle says he got a letter last fall canceling his old policy and laying out details of his ObamaCare option.
"My premiums would increase approximately 61 percent,"he says. I went from $891 a month to $1437 a month and also my deductibles all doubled."
Jeff and Victoria Haidet of North Carolina had been in a high risk pool, an expensive form of coverage for those with serious health problems, but found ObamaCare even more expensive.
"We were a little shocked to see that one come back at even higher rate than what our high risk insurance pool was. That rate came back at$950 a month for the policy, which had higher deductibles than what we had in the high risk pool," Jeff said.
All of which prompted Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell to say, " These people across America, who are losing their insurance, whose jobs are being lost, are not making this up. And no amount of Harry Reid calling everybody a liar changes the facts."
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who has given 11 speeches laying out horror stories from his constituents, also challenged Reid's accusations.
"I guess you think the active imagination of Missourians is just running wild because they're contacting our office constantly telling about higher premiums, higher deductibles, insurance they used to have that worked, and insurance that doesn't work," he said.
Those who feel they have been misled or find themselves forced to pay more than before are hardly a rarity. Some 6.2 million had their policies canceled last fall, many pushed into more expensive plans.
The Congressional Budget Office also recently found that ObamaCare will force two of three small businesses to pay higher rates than they do now and even many Democrats talk about the need to fix the law.

2013 Waste List

Taxpayer dollars fail to reform struggling schools  - $7,300,000

$7.3 million were wasted on struggling school districts that failed to implement educational reforms.

Is there a double standard for political gaffes?

In politics, the dreaded foot in mouth gaffe is an occupational hazard.The casual statement, the careless snipe, the outdated phrase that bypasses the brain’s "sensitivity” filter can wound or even doom a public figure, especially if the offender happens to be conservative.
The relative scant attention paid to such faux pas from left-leaning offenders suggests a double standard may be at work.
This week offered several examples. Vice President Joe Biden, a presumed presidential candidate, fired off yet another quip that some say played off an offensive stereotype of African-Americans and basketball.
At a Black History Month event attended by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson ,a former NBA player, Biden said, "I told the president, next game, I've got him. I may be a white boy, but I can jump."
Perhaps because Biden is perceived of as the gaffe machine that keeps on giving, or perhaps because his folksy demeanor gets him a pass, he is seldom held to account for such indelicacies.
More troublesome is a remark by Alex Sink, the Democratic House candidate in Florida's 13th Congressional District,who made a reference to Latinos in a recent debate that smacked of insensitive stereotyping - one that got little attention outside of a few conservative news outlets.
"We have a lot of employers over on the beaches that rely upon workers, and especially in this high-growth environment, where are you going to get people to work to clean out hotel rooms or do our landscaping," she said.
Also this week, UN Ambassador Samantha Power sent out a bizarre and grotesquely insensitive tweet about Daniel Pearl , the Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded on video tape by al Qaeda leader, Kalid Sheik Mohammed. "Daniel Pearl's story is a reminder that individual accountability & reconciliation are required to break cycles of violence," she wrote.
The Twitterverse briefly lit up, prompting a correction from Power, which still left critics scratching their heads. It read, "Correction: @DanielPearlFNDN's work is a reminder that individual accountability + reconciliation are required to break cycles of violence."
Also this week, Donna Brazile, the Democratic National Committee's vice chairwoman, tweeted out this embarrassing blunder in advance of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's veto of a controversial anti-gay rights bill: "Dear Arizona Republicans: Just so you know -- you've already lost this argument 50 years ago --You don't get to decide who sits at the lunch counter."
The tweet was accompanied by a grainy old photo of African-Americans seated at a segregated lunch counter.The tweet garnered no reaction until Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds saw it, and promptly tweeted that it was "The Lie of the Year." Brazile apparently forgot that segregation proliferated in the South under Democratic Party rule.
In each of the above cases, the offenders walked away virtually unscathed. Some analysts say when Republicans commit similar offenses, their careers are almost always damaged, sometimes beyond repair.
Tim Graham of the Media Research Center says swift retribution for GOP gaffes is a product of the left’s control, not just of media, but of the culture - from film, to music, to academia, to the publishing world and beyond.
"One of the ways these gaffes become so powerful," Graves says, "is that news media doesn't just notice once. It notices it again and again and again and they head into movies, into pop lyrics into late night skits, Saturday Night Live, they take a gaffe and absolutely try to immortalize it."
The New York Times on Friday reported that "Republicans have called Wendy Davis, a Democratic candidate for Texas governor, “Abortion Barbie,” likened Alison Lundergan Grimes, a Senate candidate from Kentucky, to an “empty dress,” criticized Hillary Rodham Clinton’s thighs, and referred to a pregnant woman as a “host.”
The Times story finds that Democrats virtually salivate over such GOP mistakes. Emily's List, the political action committee that supports pro-choice female candidates, has raised $25 million this election cycle. Every time a Republican inserts foot into mouth, Emily's List's fundraising arm springs into action, and the cash register starts ringing.
Republicans do the same, but as the Media Research Center's Graves tells Fox News, " our megaphone is not as big."