This has nothing to do with the President's website problems...but...under the category ofcollateral damage...my son-in-law's healthcare policy was just canceled due to Obamacare mandates.

Fortunately, he was able to get new insurance through this place of employment. Unfortunately, the next wave of cancellations (sometime next year) will be targeted at employees who have group coverage through their workplace.

Hidden inside the law is a little clause which says that if co-pays are increased by as much as $5.00 the policy can no longer be "grandfathered" in. In other words...you cannot keep it.

Jack, this year and last it was United Healthcare Missouri.

Since State Government is located here and has so many employees local governments are allowed to join that larger purchasing pool. The plan is designed by the governing entities (with only minor differences) and private insurers bid on the block as a whole. Some years we've had MercyCare Health Plans then United HealthCare Missouri for others as underwriters.

For years the Chamber of Commerce has sought legislation which would allow small businesses to join that same insurance pool so they, too, could purchase health insurance for their employees more in line with the rates that big corporations and big labor pay. But guess who is against that?

President Obama calls in Jeff Zients, the "Cash for Clunkers" guy, to fix his ailing website.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/meet-jeff-zients-man-charged-fixing-obamacares-broken/story?id=20659016

Meanwhile, 2 million Americans have received notifications that their health care insurance is being canceled. Experts claim that number will climb to 16 million by January 1.

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/10/29/cbs-news-more-than-2-million-americans-cannot-renew-current-health-insurance/

No. Our total "out of pocket" expense is $360.00 per year per spouse beginning the first of November excluding co-pays on prescriptions which are $10.00 on generic $20.00 on brand-name drugs. But when Walmart lowered their prescription rates to $4.00 for generic [our pharmacy followed suit] we always pay just $4.00 per month anyway.

We can choose any doctor or specialist we want and are not locked into a primary physician gateway. We've been very pleased with our health coverage up until now but are bracing for dramatic increases next year and especially the year following when the majority of Obamacare regulations take effect.

I don't know the answer to that. I have group insurance too. Our costs are going up about 20% as a direct result of the Obamacare law. At least that's what we were told last week by our company's underwriter (I'm covered under my wife's policy). In addition to the monthly premium increasing 20% our "out of pocket" expense will be increasing from $300.00 per spouse per year to $360.00 per year as a direct result of the law. HOWEVER, the representative from the insurance company said NEXT year our "out of pocket" expense will increase to $3.000.00 per spouse per year. The rates next year will be increasing so dramatically, we were told, because that's when many of the new provisions of Obamcare will fully take effect including mandatory psychiatric care. Our present coverage limits psychiatric care to family counseling.

After three tortuous weeks Obama finally admits his HealthCare.gov website is a disaster. Says he will bring in the nation'sbest and brightest to fix the website. He also says that he will furnish each with a note explaining to their teachers why they will be absent from school this week.

I've heard Kentucky has had very few problems with their website. Good for them!

https://kyenroll.ky.gov/

In fact, they led the nation with 167 sign-ups on the first day.

Several other states beside Kentucky have developed independent websites but have been plagued with errors like the Federal site has. I don't know it they borrowed their internal website architecture from Washington or not but it seems likely because they're experiencing similar problems.

Obamacare Is Winning in Kentucky, Thanks to Steve Beshear

Cruz: The Dream of Keeping Poor People from Seeing a Doctor Must Never Die

Obamacare woes widen as insurers get wrong data

CBS Marketwatch: Private insurers say the few completed applications they're getting from HealthCare.gov are filled with incorrect data and the culprit is the software--not the users.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obamacare-woes-widen-as-insurers-get-wrong-data-2013-10-18

Obamacare steals "free" software

How is it possible to steal something that is free? By removing the copyright notice and passing off the code as one's own. SpryMedia, a British company which developed this free, Open Source software called DataTables, plans to seek legal remediation. SpryMedia's software is not the reason, by the way, that HealthCare.gov is having such enormous problems [I've used it DataTables and it's great software]. The company licenses the software at no cost to anyone as long as a user leaves the copyright notice in place. By "in place" the company means it should be left intact inside the code itself: Not out in the open in a conspicuous place, but inside the actual code where only computer geeks and programmers will see it.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-website-violates-licensing-agreement-copyrighted-software_763666.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Best wishes on getting the coverage you need.

To my dismay, they still haven't corrected even the most basic programming mistakes on the site; mistakes which have been pointed out by programmers industry-wide. When calling a standard Javascript function the programmer has to spell the function's name correctly or else the script simply terminates. Duh. Personally, I wouldn't use any of Javascript's standard functions because they're too easily guessed by hackers. In fact, I wouldn't use Javascript at all except for the most basic form checking--and then, only if backed up with secondary programming.

Well I don't agree with all of the above BUT from what I've heard signing up is not exactly a 'straightforward' process. I'm going in tomorrow....wish me luck. I have some helpline numbers and I have been advised that I will need them

Some results are beginning to trickle in.

Iowa has had 5 people sign up during the first week. For the most part, Iowans are nice people, although Missouri once went to war with Iowa over honey (called appropriately the Honey War).

http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/Insurer-At-least-5-Iowans-Sign-Up-fo...

Hawaii has had "0" zero people sign-up which they're blaming on the website. The results have been so dismal that they're conducting a second "grand opening" to their website.

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/10/10/hawaii-relaunching-obamac...

I visited HealthCare.gov the first day it was open.

Like many others I received the message "We have a lot of visitors on the site right now. Please stay on this page." I wasn't too disturbed because I assumed millions upon millions of other visitors were curious too. By mid-afternoon of the first day the White House tweeted that they had finally had their first successful sign-up for Obamacare. The tweet was later deleted because it turned out the college student, a member of an advocacy group, was lying. The first tip-off was that the numbers he cited were incorrect.

Allegedly, no one knows how many citizens have purchased these newly mandated policies. California claimed it had over 3 million visitors the first day causing their site to crash. I thought, "That's a lot of people--but there's no way it should have caused their website to crash." On the national level, the main website at Healthcare.gov claimed that they were overwhelmed by millions upon millions of eager buyers. But when independent, third-party web traffic monitors began releasing their numbers it was quite a different story. Third-party monitors are necessary because so much of the World Wide Web is financed these days by ad money based upon unique visitors, "clicks and click-throughs." It's the only way to keep a website honest.

As these numbers began to be released it turned out that the main Obamacare website had about 8.9 million visitors the first day and California had 647 thousand. At first glance that may sound like a lot of visitors but in the world of Amazon.com, Facebook and Twitter those are incredibly small numbers.

I began to wonder if the U.S. Government was hosting this site on GoDaddy? If so, perhaps they should have chosen an account a step or two up from the economy level @ $4.95 per month?

But then I learn that they had spent $643 million dollars to build this site. That may seem like "chump change" to you but, to me, it's a lot of moola . It's more than what it cost to create and operate Facebook (for its first 6 years). It's more than it cost to build Twitter, Instagram, Linked-In, et al. Yet, for all that money, it doesn't work!

See: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

Keep in mind that the author of the article above is an Obamacare supporter. He was hoping it would succeed. He is not a critic.

But as a web developer myself, the thing that pains me the most is the utter stupidity and incompetence of HealthCare.gov. I told my wife within the first few hours that they should have just hired Amazon.com to handle these rather simple tasks for them. Amazon knows how to scale webservers, databases, and load bearing DNS servers. They know how to open accounts, verify passwords, and bill users for goods purchased.

But, no, this is the Administration's signature accomplishment and the limelight cannot be shared. There's almost a cult aspect to this mentality. A cynic might ask "If it's so great why has big labor, big corporations and big political contributors been exempted? Why has the entire burden fallen on the middle class to support this accomplishment?"

Here's just one EXAMPLE of the Obamacare website's incompetence: Programming code on the site is sitting out in the open, unencrypted and free for all the world to see. Click on the link below then scroll down the page to read in plain English examples of their branching logic (caveat: I cannot believe this code hasn't yet been secured or encrypted--if you click on the link below and fail to see the code it means they have finally gotten around to fixing it):

https://www.healthcare.gov/marketplace/global/en_US/registration.js

This example of utter incompetence has been revealed and accessible on the web for many hours yet no one at HealthCare.gov has yet taken the time to encrypt that code. UNBELIEVABLE! How can anyone be this stupid!

If we or any other "Tom, Dick and Harry" can see their internal code just think what a skilled hacker can see! This site is asking visitors to divulge the most sensitive information imaginable! Perhaps it's a good thing it doesn't work.

Why did they spend SO much money for such a lousy website? Because every cent is borrowed and the US Government has no intent--zero intention--of ever paying it back. Its only concern is to bring in enough money to pay the interest on the national debt. And with an enabling Federal Reserve Bank printing and loaning money to banks at "0" zero percent interest they're pretty much guaranteed interest rates will remain artificially low.

I'm not against all government spending. The Apollo Space program costs $20 billion dollars spread out over about 10 years (that's roughly $100 billion in today's money). NASA employed 450,000 scientists, engineers and aerospace workers (counting subcontractors) and we went to the Moon. We made advances that have powered our economy for over four decades.

Now, today, we can't even send an astronaut into Space. We have to pay Russia to get our people into low Earth orbit. Our signature achievement is: we're going to impose fines on anyone who doesn't go this stupid, unworkable website and purchase insurance. We have swapped lunar exploration for lunacy.

updated by @harold-powell: 11/11/15 10:39:00PM