http://news.yahoo.com/healthcare-gov-suffers-outage-as-sebelius-testifies-that-it-s-never-crashed-181641521.html

HealthCare.gov suffers outage as Sebelius testifies that it's never crashed

Poor timing was redefined in Washington on Wednesday.

During her testimony at a congressional hearing regarding the "debacle" of the HealthCare.gov launch, Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that while she acknowledges serious problems with the site, it has never crashed. It is functional, but at a very slow speed and very low reliability, and has continued to function.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said, "Let's put the screenshot up," referring to an image of the offline site that reads, "The system is down at the moment."

One can argue about the differences between an outage and a crash and what it means when a website is "down," but for many, a crashed website simply means it's inaccessible. During a key moment of Sebelius's testimony, that's what the site was.

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Obama should demand not ask for her resignation !!!
loved her "whatever" moment too...so childlike !!!

http://nypost.com/2013/10/28/face-of-obamacare-dropped-after-botched-rollout/

Now you see her – and now you don’t.

The young woman who had become the face of ObamaCare – and the butt of jokes over its disastrous rollout – has mysteriously vanished from the HealthCare.gov Web site.

When the site launched Oct. 1, one of the first things visitors saw was the pretty brunette with an inviting smile on her face next to the gushing words: “The Health Insurance Marketplace is Open!”

But as problems with the site comically mounted, the anonymous woman became the target of jokes on social media.

“It would really suck to be the woman in the stock photo on healthcare.gov,” tweeted Tim Johnson.

Several others tweeted an image of the woman’s photo on the side of a milk carton with the words: “Missing. Have you seen me?”

ConservativeGrace added on Twitter, “The Obamacare Website Girl has gone missing. Wouldn’t you?”


.

http://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-sebelius-misstates-law-signup-start-181255865--politics.html
FACT CHECK: Sebelius misstates law on signup start

WASHINGTON (AP) — Misstating the health care law she is responsible for administering, Kathleen Sebelius has asserted that the law required health insurance sign-ups to start Oct. 1, whether the system was ready or not. In fact, the decision when to launch the sign-up website was hers.

The troubled debut of the government's health insurance enrollment website has raised questions about whether its start date should have been delayed to allow testing and repairs before it went live. Asked last week whether that might have been the wiser course, Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, said that wasn't possible because the law required an Oct. 1 launch.

In a visit to a community health center in Austin, Texas, on Friday, Sebelius acknowledged more testing would have been preferable. "In an ideal world there would have been a lot more testing, but we did not have the luxury of that and the law said the go-time was Oct. 1," she said.

But the law imposed no legal requirement to open the website Oct 1. The law says only that the enrollment period shall be "as determined by the secretary." The launch date was set not in the law, but in regulations her department had issued. Agencies routinely allow themselves flexibility on self-imposed deadlines.

Officials could have postponed open enrollment by a month, or they could have phased in access to the website. Oregon, one of the 14 states that built its own website under the federal law, did just that, allowing initial website access only for counselors instead of the general public.

Larry Levitt, health insurance expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said that in setting the sign-up start date the administration had to balance three competing interests: keeping the enrollment period short enough to prevent people from waiting to see whether they developed a health condition that needed insurance; keeping the period long enough to allow consumers to learn about their options; and allowing enough time to have the sign-up system ready for an onslaught of applications.

"Looking in the rear-view window, the systems obviously weren't ready by Oct. 1 and a delay would have allowed for a smoother launch," he said.

In the Texas appearance, Sebelius also pointed to a more likely reason behind the urgency to launch: politics, and in particular a government shutdown over the issue.

"A political atmosphere where the majority party, at least in the House, was determined to stop this anyway they possibly could ... was not an ideal atmosphere," she said.

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I think she, like Obama, has just confirmed that the person at the top is indeed incompetent and has no idea what the law actually is as written...

there is also no info on the site that I can find where one can compare plans offered...the cost of each plan is quoted but there r no details on the plans...and no link to the insurer for the plans listed so one can compare coverage...so I can't find that the statement that u can compare plans w/out an application to be truthful...

kindergarteners could have designed a better website...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-obama-healthcare-website-20131028,0,1708645.story
7:46 a.m. CDT, October 28, 2013

"The outage that started in the early hours of Sunday caused the data center to lose network connectivity with the federal government's data services hub, an electronic traffic roundabout that links the online health insurance marketplaces with numerous federal agencies and can verify people's identity, citizenship, and other facts.

Without the hub, consumers are unable to apply online for coverage or determine their eligibility for federal subsidies to help pay for insurance premiums. On Saturday, Sebelius praised the hub's ability to perform complex calculations in quick time as an example of a successful segment of the system."
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so now the successful part has crashed...while it was being fixed !!!
Sebelius...UR FIRED...bring in the Donald...lol

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/does-the-obamacare-penalty-actually-have-teeth--144740030.html

The Obamacare Penalty: Yes, It Can Be Avoided

The Obama administration this week said it is delaying the enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s mandate, extending until March 31 how long Americans can go without insurance before facing a penalty.

But how strict is the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate to begin with? It’s a question that’s floated around since the mandate was first mentioned: Can the government – and more specifically, the IRS – really enforce the mandate penalty? The answer is yes, but only up to a point. Whichever political side of the ACA you are on, it is a technical question that’s piqued the curiosity of consumers and pundits alike.

Consumers don’t have to report on whether they have coverage or are exempt from the mandate until they file their 2014 income tax return, which are due April 15, 2015. (Insurers will be required to provide everyone they cover with information that will help them demonstrate they had coverage.)

As it stands now, the individuals who don’t obtain health coverage in a given year (and are not exempt from the mandate) are subject to a fine of $95 for an individual or 1% of family income, whichever is greater. In 2015, the penalty increases to $325 per adult, or 2% of family income, whichever is greater.

How exactly will the penalty be assessed? If you don’t have sufficient health coverage by the deadline, the “IRS will hold back the amount of the fee from any future tax refunds,” according to HealthCare.gov, the government’s marketplace website.

But what if you don’t get a tax refund? Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh picked up on this subject on his show this week, telling listeners: “The only way that they can collect the penalty or the fine is by taking money from your refund. If you are not owed a refund, they cannot get money from you.”

We asked Mark Luscombe, principal analyst at CCH Tax & Accounting North America, about that. Turns out Limbaugh is essentially right. If you don't get a refund next year, the “IRS could carry over the sum due and apply it against any refunds in future years. On a joint return, the penalty of one joint filer could be applied against the refund due to the other joint filer,” Luscombe says.

“If you don’t pay it, all they can do is wait until they owe you some money and take that. Or probably just send you a letter every now and then reminding you that you owe money to the IRS,” says Timothy Jost, a professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and coauthor of the casebook “Health Law.”

And by the way, once the IRS assesses the penalty, they’ve got 10 years to collect, says Bryan Camp, law professor at Texas Tech University.

The law also prohibits the IRS from using liens or levies to collect any “payment you owe related to the law, if you, your spouse or a dependent included on your tax return does not have minimum essential coverage,” according to the IRS. That means the IRS cannot go into someone’s “checking accounts anyway and just take the money,” as one of Limbaugh’s callers suggested the Obama administration might just do.

One other possible way for the government to recover the penalty owed is by suing you, says Camp. “It’s a difficult process because it’s the Department of Justice that has to file the suit, and they’ll only do that if the IRS asks and begs them to do it… The IRS can’t sue anyone for failure to pay taxes,” says Camp. If the government sues you for other tax debts, they can add this penalty to the amount. But “if it’s such a small amount, it’s unlikely the government would sue for the same very practical reasons you wouldn’t sue someone for $25,” he says.

Perhaps most important, there are no criminal penalties for not paying up. “You can’t go to jail – that’s not an option,” Jost says.

As Limbaugh explained on his show, “If you structure your taxes so that you do not get a refund, you do not have to buy insurance and you do not have to pay a fine 'cause they can't collect it from you if you don't have a refund due. And that is just another nail in the coffin of Obamacare imploding on itself.” (That might be tough, however – most Americans get tax refunds. The IRS said about 75% of taxpayers got a refund last year.)

As Jost says, unless the law boosts the IRS’s power to collect these fines, it is, indeed, possible for one to go on without obtaining health coverage and never be financially penalized.

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fired for telling the TRUTH...I'm sure Obamacare workers in that position r so tired of hearing all the legitimate complaints that it felt GOOD just to say that !!!~

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/court-could-block-obamacare-subsidies-in-34-states-2013-10-25?siteid=yhoof2

Oct. 25, 2013, 6:01 a.m. EDT

Court could block Obamacare subsidies in 34 states
By Diana Furchtgott-Roth

The administration is interpreting the Affordable Care Act in extraordinary ways, and the courts are beginning to take note.

On Tuesday Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said he would rule on whether people who sign up for health insurance on federal exchanges in 34 states can get subsidies.

Under the Affordable Care Act, subsidies are only available for state exchanges. But through regulation the Internal Revenue Service has extended subsidies to federal exchanges too.

Separately, the White House signaled on Wednesday that it is postponing for a few months the penalties for people who do not sign up for health insurance — even though earlier this month President Barack Obama attacked congressional Republicans who sought to postpone penalties for a year. Also see: Obamacare penalties to be delayed.

Several groups are challenging the federal subsidies. Judge Friedman ruled that their case could go forward, disappointing the administration. The Justice Department argued that the court should throw out the case because the plaintiffs had no standing. After the judge’s ruling, the plaintiffs are standing tall.

Next week, Judge James R. Spencer of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Division of Virginia in Richmond is expected to rule on the same challenge from another group of plaintiffs. In August, U.S. District Judge Ronald White allowed Oklahoma to proceed with a similar case against the subsidies.

The implications are immense. Family plans will cost $20,000 a year in 2016, according to the IRS. If Americans on the federally run exchanges do not qualify for health-insurance subsidies, few will sign up. Plans will be simply unaffordable. Obamacare will collapse not because of Congress, but due to flaws in the structure of the law.

The text of the Affordable Care Act states that people who buy health insurance from state exchanges get subsidies if they earn under 400% of the poverty line, currently $94,000 for a family of four. Most applicants will qualify for some subsidy.

According to the law, subsidies are available to those who get their health insurance “through an Exchange established by the State under section 1311 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” Or, in another section, those “enrolled in through (sic) an Exchange established by the State under section 1311.”

How many uninsured people are eligible for assistance under the Affordable Care Act?
Congress put state subsidies in place to encourage states to set up exchanges. Still, only 16 states and the District of Columbia took the carrot and set them up, fewer than anticipated.

A different section of the act (Section 1321) allows the federal government to set up exchanges in states that have not done so. It is these federal exchanges that have made headlines due to their technical problems. But nowhere does the law say that people on these federal exchanges can receive tax subsidies.

No problem, said the IRS in a May 2012 ruling. The IRS extended the subsidies to those getting health insurance on any exchange by defining an exchange as a “State Exchange, regional Exchange, subsidiary Exchange, and Federally-facilitated Exchange.”

This IRS ruling may have had the unintended consequence of discouraging states from setting up exchanges. States had nothing to gain, and a lot to lose, if the exchanges did not work efficiently. Governors may well have calculated that if Uncle Sam were going to set up exchanges and give their residents the same level of subsidy, why set up their own exchanges? If problems occur, as is happening now, the federal government takes the blame, not the governor or Legislature.

Two groups of Virginia and District of Columbia residents are suing the government, arguing that extending the subsidies to federal exchanges puts them at a disadvantage.

Without the subsidy, their attorneys argue, the cost of health insurance would be greater than 8% of their income, meeting the definition of unaffordable coverage. This would enable them to receive a certificate of exemption from the requirement to purchase health insurance. It would also enable them to buy catastrophic health insurance, low-cost insurance against major illness.

Otherwise, lower cost catastrophic health insurance is only available to those under 30 years of age.

In response, the Department of Justice stated that the law is ambiguous, so the IRS had the right to extend subsidies to the federal exchanges. Plus, the government attorneys say, the plaintiffs are not being hurt by being provided with subsidized insurance. With the subsidies in the federal exchanges, the plaintiffs would pay $20 monthly for insurance, rather than hundreds of dollars monthly for catastrophic health insurance.

Judge Friedman disagreed with the Justice Department. Ruling from the bench, he denied the request for a preliminary injunction to block the subsidies, but made it clear that he understands the timing and intends to expedite the case to final judgment. That is the ideal approach, because it means he will rule on the merits by mid-February, and whoever loses can appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The denial of the government’s motion to dismiss was the important development, because the government was desperate to avoid having any court consider the merits of the case. However Friedman and Spencer resolve the issue, it will ultimately be up to the appellate court (or Supreme Court) to decide. This week’s actions ensure that will happen in the next two months, rather than in six months, or a year, or in 2017 (as the government wanted).

One major question is spending authority. If Congress did not authorize subsidies for federal exchanges, does the IRS have the right to spend the money?

In the motion for preliminary injunction in the federal court in Washington, attorneys Michael Carvin, Jacob Roth, and Jonathan Berry of the law firm Jones Day argued compellingly that “far from properly implementing the ACA, the IRS chose to ignore ‘the will of Congress as evinced in the statute’s text’ and proceeded to promulgate a rule that purports to authorize billions of dollars in federal subsidies.”

With Friedman’s ruling, the court will decide by February on the IRS’s newfangled interpretation of subsidies for federal exchanges. Without these subsidies, the federal exchanges in 34 states will collapse not because of the technical problems now dominating the news, but because the insurance will be unaffordable.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, directs Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute.
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Plug ur figures in here

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/09/26/226456791/how-much-will-obamacare-cost-me-try-our-calculator

My Obamacare premium will be $6599. My current BlueCross BlueShield of NC is $4800. Difference of $1800 dollars. With my subsidy my premium drops $1000 a year to $3800.00. Good 4 me BUT the question is who the hell negotiated this deal so that the insurance companies were able to raise rates getting well over half of the government subsidy...in other words to save me $1000 dollars a year my government had to pad the pockets of the insurers with taxpayer's money to the tune of $1800 dollars...

well there is one thing 4 sure...health insurance rates will go up because of the subsidies...the insurance companies will end up with most of the government subsidies by enacting rate increases dollar 4 dollar based on subsidy amounts...and then they will claim u r getting more coverage...and that your new policy is better than your old one.

MIAMI (AP) - "Florida's insurance officials are predicting that health insurance rates will rise 5 to 20 percent for small businesses and 30 to 40 percent in the individual market through the state's new exchange."

http://www.wtsp.com/news/topstories/article/327706/250/FL-insurance-officials-Rates-will-rise-under-Obamacare

"Ohioans using the new marketplaces created by the federal health care law will pay on average 41 percent more for their monthly premiums, state insurance officials said Thursday, though federal subsidies will defray some of that cost."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ohio-officials-rates-increase-under-134331902.html

so all the government subsidies u will get will actually mostly go to the insurance companies because of the rate increases...

Imagine that....thanks again Obamacare !!!

Big Johnny came home from college and told his dad he had SAVED him a $1,000 at school last semester...Dad was so PROUD of him...u c Big Johnny had decided to buy a new football for $100...he WAS gonna get the one that sells for $200...so...let's see... he SAVED $100 ...Big Johnny needed a new helmet for his skateboard...he was gonna get the one that cost 300.00 but settled for the one that cost $200...another 100 dollars SAVED...lastly Big Johnny bought his girlfriend a new necklace for $500...he should have gotten her the one that cost $1300....another $800 SAVED...Johnny's dad was so proud and told all his friends that his son Johnny was so smart cause he SAVED a $1,000 dollars his first semester away at school...Johnny's dad is a US Senator >>>>>>>>>>>> imagine that!

someone recommended on another site to remove and reinstall Norton...Bingo...problem fixed !!!

Thanks again...both IE9 and google chrome came factory installed on laptop...IE9 quit working so I went in safe mode and IE9 worked OK..

went back to normal mode and google chrome worked OK...IE9 still would not

some sites I use for business/school recommend IE9 to use for best results...

would like to get it working again rather than redo/relearn where everything is...and the laptop is only 6 months old

thanks for the reply

I uninstalled from programs...when tried to install says can not install more recent version already installed on this computer...

Interenet explorer will not load any pages....works ok in safe mode

google chrome works Ok in normal mode and safe mode

all other programs seem to work ok

no malware or virus per scans - malwarebytes used

ccleaner used also running norton antivirus

have tried the reset internet explorer feature and many FixIt solutions from microsoft

any help would be appreciated ! keep it simple please as I do not know
much about computer repair problems...Thanks

windows 7 home premium/x-64/toshiba satellite L755 laptop

Rather than concentrating on capital gains taxes it would probably be more beneficial to the government to eliminate all credits for capital gain losses...problem solved

ask the bondholders who are taxpayers how much was robbed from them/
many were retirees on fixed income.