Top Ten Obamacare Disasters to Come: Obamacare’s digital issues are just the beginning

NRO2The fun just doesn’t stop. From Grace-Marie Turner at NRO:

President Obama’s Monday Rose Garden speech replayed the same talking points he has been using for more than three years about Obamacare, while also offering old-tech suggestions, such as telephone hotlines and paper applications, to work around the law’s disastrous website.

But enrollment in Obamacare insurance ultimately does depend upon the website’s problems’ being fixed, because the information gathered via phone calls and paper applications must be entered into massive federal government databases to check eligibility. A delay of the individual tax penalties will be inevitable if the site isn’t fixed soon; you can’t penalize people if they can’t enroll.

But eventually, software can be fixed. Obamacare’s epic policy flaws can’t.

The problems increasingly are going to be up close and personal, as people see for themselves the impact it has on their lives and pocketbooks. The top ten debacles to come:

1. Deductible shock: When consumers finally do get onto the Healthcare.gov website, they are in for a new kind of sticker shock. Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute has exposed the high cost of Obamacare premiums — the next price shock will be the whopping cost of the deductibles.

A Chicago Tribune analysis showed that 21 of the 22 lowest-priced plans offered for Cook County residents on the Illinois exchange have annual deductibles of more than $4,000 for an individual and $8,000 for family coverage. (Deductibles are the money consumers must spend on health care before most insurance benefits kick in.)

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