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October 23, 2013

The Long Con, or the Administration's approach to marketing Obamacare...

CBS News has uncovered major faults in one of the "new, improved" features of Healthcare.gov. The Administration was concerned that allowing consumers to look at insurance prices before they provided the personal information needed to estimate potential subsidies would be a PR disaster. So they built the kludge that is the front end of Obamacare in 37 states. In an attempt to undo this massive error, they have added the ability to "shop" insurance quotes directly. Unfortunately, the estimates they provide are materially misleading.

"Industry executives CBS News spoke with could not believe the government is providing these estimates, which they said were useless and could easily mislead consumers. They also said that the website repeatedly states the actual prices could be lower, but it makes no mention that they could be higher."

If a private company sold products this way they would at a minimum be sued and quite possibly go to jail.

October 23, 2013 at 09:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 08, 2013

QOTD: "If the American public knew what was going on in our system, half would be outraged and the other half would apply for benefits."

Marilyn D Zahm, Administrative Law Judge, Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) in Buffalo, New York, as quoted by CBS' 60 Minutes.  (Maybe Romney was on to something with his comment about the 47%...)

October 8, 2013 at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 02, 2013

QOTD: "I haven't seen morale this bad since the Titanic"

Richard Stein, a financial services headhunter at Caldwell Partners, commenting on the spirits of Wall Street execs, as quoted by the WSJ.

October 2, 2013 at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack