Thursday, November 28, 2013

Obamacare Shopping…. Thanksgiving Day , 3 users a MINUTE? - UPDATE FROM PASTORIUS - That's Approximately the Same Users Per Day as IBA

UPDATED AT BOTTOM OF POST

We now have at least 4 different web services accessing data for premiums, 3 are completely outside the federal site.

Actual rates can be EASILY calculated by establishing the ratio between the posted shopping rate estimates at ages 27 or 50, and the actual ages and plan factors as posted on ANY STATE'S INSURANCE SITE (you all have state insurance commissioners and the the states PUBLISH this. Here is Maine's

Therefore you write a page with SIMPLE code to access the FREELY available data embedded in THIS POST below.
Powered by Socrata

The site ITSELF will provide the filtering language FOR YOU to display any age, family situation, county etc any user can provide, and you enter those variables to display the answer to the user.

BASIC STUFF outside of security.

BASIC STUFF.

But for the data itself, ANY SERVICE which whacks that data.healthcare.gov site, increases the access count, and there are still a paltry amount of accesses. Since 34 of 50 states use this, it means if the same proportion of people nationwide are shopping their respective state exchange sites, about 5800 people nationwide are shopping all sites everywhere.

I can't get around the assumption that IF this shopping data is representative, this is a catastrophe for the admin. Maybe there is another hidden away site that reflects the true patterns, The traffic data is REMOVED now, from public access for the actual healthcare.gov site proper. I think we can all imagine a  few reasons why.
image

Maybe people are going right to the purchasing data and buying there, BUT THEY ARE NOT SHOPPING USING THE FEDERAL SITE FOR SHOPPING, and AFAIK, every outside service providing info USES data.healthcare.gov (although they could download a copy and use it themselves, but IT DOES GET UPDATED).

Perhaps these are HIGHLY motivated shoppers. People who are sick and have immediate unresolved needs and would truly benefit from Obamacare, IF THEY CAN AFFORD IT, and therefore the majority are signing up. But if 5800 or so people are shopping they are still orders of magnitude short of the 39k per day they need and the balance of patients is obviously going to be a disaster speaking strictly economically.
In the last few days Ms Sebelius has stated they will be able t handle 50k users simultaneously. Based on the UNDENIABLE numbers at data.heatlhcare.gov, we can STATE, that the site is now averaging 3 users a minute.

WHY IS THERE ANY PROBLEM?

If you are reading this YOUR LAPTOP COULD BE A FEDERAL SERVER.

I can only approach this based on the hard, objective numbers I can find, the news (self filtered) and what I see around me, And that is this, you all know my story .. rates DOUBLED in to 4 figures for an individual and what was affordable before is now  total farce. I am COUNTED as a sign up, but in fact am a legal opt out based on cost.

One child is a high level employee at an development and IT firm. They have less than 50 employees. Their employer provided insurance provider recently informed them of the changes required by Obamacare.

Previously what amount to a 1 from column A 2 from column B, health care insurance choice, was satisfactory to EVERY employee. They have 1 exec, 1 admin and all the rest are IT or developers. PROFESSIONALS. YOUNG PROFESSIONALS. The changes required increased the participation costs of the employees by 50-70%.

That's a 100% hit to disposable income and savings.

Result?

NOT ONE OF THEM IS GOING TO CONTINUE.

This is the Volstead Act.

PASTORIUS UPDATE - 

3 User a minute is 4320 a day.

To put that in perspective, Infidel Bloggers Alliance averages about 3900 Users a day, according to Google Stats.

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