What’s interesting in the news today?
1. I read a lot of news. It takes quite a doozy to shock me. This one did. Talk about overreach.
From TheTelegraph/UK “A pregnant woman has had her baby forcibly removed by caesarean section by social workers.
Essex social services obtained a High Court order against the woman that allowed her to be forcibly sedated and her child to be taken from her womb.”
“The council said it was acting in the best interests of the woman, an Italian who was in Britain on a work trip, because she had suffered a mental breakdown.
The baby girl, now 15 months old, is still in the care of social services, who are refusing to give her back to the mother, even though she claims to have made a full recovery.”
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2. So is the ObamaCare site fixed? Depends who you ask.
From FoxNews “Despite the Obama administration’s claim that HealthCare.gov is “vastly improved,” insurance companies are still grappling with error-riddled files fed to them from the flawed website. The lingering glitch could cause major problems weeks down the road, resulting in people thinking they’ve signed up when insurance companies have no record of them doing so.
These so-called “back-end” problems were largely glossed over when federal health officials confidently claimed over the weekend they had met their own goals for improving the website by Dec. 1. “
“But insurers continue to deal with the same set of problems that have shaken their confidence for weeks in the system they have to rely on to enroll new customers.
“Until the enrollment process is working from end-to-end, many consumers will not be able to enroll in coverage,” Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, said in a statement. “
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3. Does this sound fixed?
From TheHill “A back-up system was deployed for HealthCare.gov on Monday at a lower traffic rate than federal officials projected, signaling there could be further trouble with the system.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) acknowledged that the site’s try-again-later system was initiated as roughly 35,000 users tried to access HealthCare.gov at the same time.”
“CMS had previously said the back-up system would be used only when HealthCare.gov was coping with 50,000 simultaneous visitors.
Officials said the decision came in response to a slight rise in error rates and response times across the site. CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille sought to downplay the move, suggesting it was unrelated to the site’s overall functionality.”
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4. And what about safety? Yeah….no.
From CNBC “It could take a year to secure the risk of “high exposures” of personal information on the federal Obamacare online exchange, a cybersecurity expert told CNBC on Monday.
“When you develop a website, you develop it with security in mind. And it doesn’t appear to have happened this time,” said David Kennedy, a so-called “white hat” hacker who tests online security by breaching websites. He testified on Capitol Hill about the flaws of HealthCare.gov last week.
“It’s really hard to go back and fix the security around it because security wasn’t built into it,” said Kennedy, chief executive of TrustedSec. “We’re talking multiple months to over a year to at least address some of the critical-to-high exposures on the website itself.”
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversaw the implementation of the website, the components used to build the site are compliant with standards set by Federal security authorities.”
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5. You know they’re gonna attempt to delay this, but it is coming.
From TheWaPo “Democrats are praying that this weekend’s relaunch of the Obamacare Web site will save them from an electoral bloodbath in 2014. Their hopes are misplaced. Here are five numbers that suggest that public anger over Obamacare will only grow as Election Day 2014 approaches:
5.5 million. That is how many people the administration needs to sign up in just 23 days because Obamacare drove them out of their health-care plans. That’s some 240,000 sign-ups every single day, just to break even. Getting that many enrolled in a few weeks would be extraordinarily difficult even if the Web site were working perfectly, which it isn’t. According to the New York Times, the system is still sending insurers inaccurate or incomplete information, and the companies are being “deluged with phone calls from people who believe they have signed up for a particular health plan, only to find that the company has no record of the enrollment.” As a result, many Americans could find themselves without insurance on Jan. 1. Their anger at those responsible for putting them through this panic and disruption is not likely to subside by November 2014.”
“50 million. That is how many Americans will be surprised to find their employer-based health plans dropped or substantially changed next year because of Obamacare. Some will see their plans canceled; others will lose their doctors and see premiums or deductibles rise dramatically. If Democrats think the public is mad about 5.5 million cancellations in the individual market today, imagine the outrage when tens of millions lose their plans in October 2014, right before Election Day.”
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Wandering Views 