A punch card...
... is not the same thing as a punch list.
December 2, 2013
Signs of Ezra Klein's lack of real-world work experience.
Writing about the Obamacare website, he says: "More than 400 of the 600 fixes on the administration's 'punchcard' of repairs have been made."
A punch card...
... is not the same thing as a punch list.
A punch card...
... is not the same thing as a punch list.
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145 comments:
Punch cards are so old, they were used to write the Constitution, Ezra.
The quickest way to lose respect for journalists is to see them write about something you know well.
Ezra had to write that column to keep those special WH invites coming.
Just wait until Obama declares "medical martial law" and takes over the entire healthcare system to respond to the national crisis he created.
Then we'll see why they've been hoarding all that hollow-point ammunition.
I could never figure out the secret of Ezra Klein's success. He seems like a run of the mill liberal idiot. Sure, he has all the right opinions, but so do lots of other people.
Is it a nepotism job? Is he somebody's son?
Perhaps you expect too much from a WaPost hack? After all, especially with this administration in the White House, actually completing a project really isn't important.
Appearances matter. Accomplishments, not so much.
What's puzzling is that he put quotes around it, so does that mean he was quoting someone or something specific or whatever?
How many of the 400 Punchcard fixes have resulted in additions to the Punchcard list?
That's usually how it works when you're bug fixing. A fix reveals a problem.
And not a single new fix has been added!
I'm just glad our long national nightmare of the healthcare website not working properly is finally over. Who won't remember exactly where they were?
Better watch it, Professor. Ezra's going to complain about your imputed anti-semitism again.
Ezra's like an old IBM 1401 Collating Machine. Just doing what he's told, or doing what the punch cards tell him to do. He sees the punch cards as controlling the world, so it has to be punch cards not lists.
Or maybe he's just an old Teletype Model 33 machine processing paper tape (a more modern punch card).
All-in-all, this probably explains his difficulty with understanding how the world works.
I had a computer programming course in 1974 in college and we used punch cards to debug our programs which performed only the most basic tasks.
Most librul pundits don't have a clue as to how computers are programmed and how stunningly complex the Obamacare law is to program. That is why the law is so complex - it was designed by clueless libs with no real world experience [like Obama].
"The Washington Post's Ezra Klein: "My friends on the right don’t like to hear this, but the Constitution is not a clear document. Written 100 years ago, when America had thirteen states and very different problems, it rarely speaks directly to the questions we ask it."
Why Klein was not sent back to the kiddies table after this pronouncement is beyond me.
Nonapod, that's a good point about the quotation marks. In a blog comment, saying "Obama eats dog daily" is OK, but in WaPo, that probably wouldn't pass muster. This transgression might be a sign of WaPo's attitude toward blogs, since young Ezra's thing is supposed to be a "blog".
Original Mike: You have to wonder which pieces of paper actually answer the questions Ezra asks? I think it may be a pharmacological issue with Ezra.
All-in-all, this probably explains his difficulty with understanding how the world works.
From the article:
Obamacare is now moving from unexpected problems that threaten the law to predictable disruptions that are, in many cases, intended by the law. And the Obama administration will have three full years to create millions, and perhaps tens of millions, of winners who are getting insurance or protection through the law. (my emphasis)
I think Ezra Klein knows exactly how the world works. Slush money isn't rocket science.
Where he exposes himself is in his phrase "predictable disruptions". What Mr. Klein knows to be "predictable" may not align with what the electorate has been lead to expect. What hurt the Obama administration the most this season wasn't the crash healthcare.gov but the completely predictable exposing of his lies about existing plans.
Ezra likely smokes hopium.
garage: "I'm just glad our long national nightmare of the healthcare website not working properly is finally over."
Uh, it's not over.
And it's not the biggest problem.
You might want to look into the over 100 million Americans who will be booted from their private and employer-based plans before this is over.
Reading comprehension. Look into it.
Oh wait. That would require reading.
Belay my last.
Was it Ezra who hemmed & hawed ( and the guilt, oh, the guilt) about becoming a rent-seeker or landlord?
How could he not know what a punch list is? He might own 2 properties.
Best and brightest EVAH!
You might want to look into the over 100 million Americans who will be booted from their private and employer-based plans before this is over.
LOL
Big Mike said...
"Better watch it, Professor. Ezra's going to complain about your imputed anti-semitism again."
I remember exactly where garage mahal was when Ezra Klein made that complaint.
I am also mystified by the reputation of Klein who is just a kid from UCLA with a Poli Sci degree. He did endear himself with an Obama-like rhetorical touch.
"In December 2009, Klein wrote an article in the Washington Post, stating that Senator Joe Lieberman was "willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score", because Lieberman "was motivated to oppose health care legislation in part out of resentment at liberals for being defeated in the 2006 Connecticut Democratic Primary".
At that time he was 4 years out of college.
"The quickest way to lose respect for journalists is to see them write about something you know well."
Ain't that the truth.
Although in this case, any idiot knows the difference between a punch card and a punch list.
Ezra Klein isn't just any idiot.
"The quickest way to lose respect for journalists is to see them write about something you know well."
Michael Crichton called that "The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect"
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
"Signs of Ezra Klein's lack of real-world work experience.
A punch card...
... is not the same thing as a punch list.
Well, that pretty much summarizes why he's a punch line.
tim in vermont,
I agree. Its not just Ezra. Its pretty much the rule rather than the exception.
>> You might want to look into the over 100 million Americans who will be booted from their private and employer-based plans before this is over.
> LOL
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2010-06-17/pdf/2010-14488.pdf , page 34553 says 49-80% of small employer plans and 39-64% of large employer plans will go away "soon". (Obama has delayed enforcement for a year since that document was produced.)
If Garage thinks that HHS, Treasury, and Labor are over-estimating, let's see his supporting data.
Forgive him. He's just regurgitating the information given him by some of the OFWG at the White House, who were around in the punch-card era. But who are a bit punch drunk now.
He wrote "punchcard" instead of "punchlist?" How incredibly offensive to those of us anchored in the real-world of tenured professorship. And in a blog post, no less!
Seriously, this has to be a new low in "gotcha" blogging.
But, it's a lot of fun, and, by all means, don't forget to click on the Amazon portal on your way out the door.
OTOH, maybe Ezra wrote punch card because that's what they're using!
Which explains a lot.
MadisonMan said...
How many of the 400 Punchcard fixes have resulted in additions to the Punchcard list?
5, 80 column punch cards make a punch list.
MM, did you ever use punch cards or paper tape? fond memories :(
In those days, smart programmers were very careful with their "card decks". I remember one Grad student whose analysis program took up nearly two card boxes.
A Lesson learned: Smart programmers stripe the tops of a card deck with a highlighter pen so if the card deck is dropped, the deck can be rebuilt in less than 6 months :)
Where he exposes himself is in his phrase "predictable disruptions". What Mr. Klein knows to be "predictable" may not align with what the electorate has been led to expect. What hurt the Obama administration the most this season wasn't the crash healthcare.gov but the completely predictable exposing of his lies about existing plans.
But, yes, all of this was predictable. And predicted. And essential to the law's functioning even remotely as it was intended to. If you don't force essentially everyone in the individual market onto the exchanges, whether they like it or not, the exchanges won't work.
They knew perfectly well which fraction of plans were PPACA-compliant when the law was signed (hardly any of them); they could guess how many would be tweaked enough to lose their "grandfathered" status (most of them); they were just taken a bit aback by the vehemence of the resulting shitstorm. I think they will be even more surprised towards the end of next year.
bbkingfish: It is a sort of theme. Or to put it another way it is a tell. The theme is that journalists who are in the business of putting words together but who are nearly uniformly lazy often use the wrong words, thus undermining their credibility. A theme.
The tell is when you know the other person is ill equipped to deal with the bet, poker, or the task, opining. You know this because they use the wrong word or give away a bit of information that undermines their position. A tell.
So what you might see as a silly miss of a single word, others who are perhaps more observant, see themes. Tells.
healthcare.gov works well enough in my state for me to get a list of premiums and benefits for myself and four kids. I found the closest plan to the one I have now, with the following differences:
1) out-of-pocket max is $8000/$4000 (family/individual) vs $6000/$3000
2) Family deductible is $1500 vs $1000
The premium is 25% higher than what my COBRA payment would be. If I drop my oldest, the plan prices become close to the same.
Therein lies a big fiscal problem. Under most employer plans, once you add family coverage, the number of dependents doesn't matter. So, if I drop all my adult dependents, they could enroll in medicare and my entire premiums would drop. So what incentive do I have to cover my adult children [under 26]?
And wow, do prices escalate as you pass your mid-forties. Actuarialy sound, but if you can't do the same for women and why can you do it for the aged?
Re Drill Sgt:
Smart programmers may have used the stripe method - because smart programming goes with lazy.
OTOH, non-lazy programmers put a control card in the card-punch machines that punched a sequential code in each Hollerith card [just showing off], so that a dropped deck could be put in a collating machine and restored presto magico.
Personally, in the years I used punched cards, I don't recall seeing anyone using the sequential numbering feature.
For the record, I learned FORTRAN using punchcards. I even used a punchcard machine which had an LED display--you'd enter the info and then press the punch key. Dropping a stack of those cards was a nightmare.
Andy: "If Garage thinks that HHS, Treasury, and Labor are over-estimating, let's see his supporting data"
Garage is your typical low information and low skill apparatchik.
You have to remember that the administrations own estimates place the number of Americans whose policies will have to go away at over 100 million.
But garage was never directly told that by his betters.
Therefore he doesn't "know" it.
On the other hand, garage probably does think its funny that so many people are losing their health insurance.
He's not the only one on the left that seems to get giddy at all the pain being caused to individuals and families by obamacare.
Leftism really is a sickness.
Saying "400 of 600 have been fixed" is a meaningless statement without knowing the severity, complexity, and priority of the 400 and the 600.
It could mean the work is 2/3 complete... or 99% complete, or 1% complete.
Punch card? That's a Hollerith card for those geezerized enough to remember.
I used an 029 IBM Key Punch when I first started working....for the City of Detroit. They probably still use them.
I worked in a Chevy plant where all the fans were run by a program on paper tape....your choices included both "off" AND "on"
"If you like your EBCDIC, you can keep your EBCDIC"
I think what garage understands is that Obama has until 2016 to get this thing creaking along reliably enough that we decide to keep it.
If we keep it and it eventually bridges us over to single-payer like it's supposed to, then 10 years from now, when people are used to single-payer and, like the people in so many in other countries that live with single-payer who are literally afraid to live without it, then nobody will care that the rollout was rocky.
Obamacare will be judged a success and that's that. Just like the professor and her vote for Obama, people won't enegage in alternative history, they won't wonder about all the cures that weren't discovered, they won't remember that they had pretty good coverage before Obama came along and gave them coverage, they will assume that the only reason they can see a doctor is because Obama gave them that doctor.
Klein now works for Bezos. He should hope Jeff does nor read this drivel..
...they will assume that the only reason they can see a doctor is because Obama gave them that doctor.....
Once a year for FREE and you can't talk about any issues, but, hey, it's FREE and I saw a doctor!
Depending on how many there are.....
And Goldman Sachs just downgraded Q4 2013 real GDP growth to 1.3%.
Klein now works for Bezos. He should hope Jeff does nor read this drivel..
@Andy, you don't get what tickled garage's funny bone. He's well aware that most of the people with cancelled plans are the proprietors of, or work for, small non-union firms. But he's also a hard core unionist, and so to him 100 million people losing their healthcare plans is a feature, and by no means a bug.
@Revenant, the rule of thumb is that a system is 99% complete for 99% of the time you work on it.
You have to remember that the administrations own estimates place the number of Americans whose policies will have to go away at over 100 million.
No, it doesn't. Where did you pick this up from? Let me guess, American Thinker? Frontpagemag?
MM, did you ever use punch cards or paper tape? fond memories :(
Newbies. When I learned to program a computer, real men wrote binary executables and loaded them into memory by setting switches on the front panel.
"The Washington Post's Ezra Klein: "My friends on the right don’t like to hear this, but the Constitution is not a clear document. Written 100 years ago, when America had thirteen states and very different problems, it rarely speaks directly to the questions we ask it."
I don't know, it seems to be pretty clear when you ask it questions like:
How old does the President need to be?
What are the three branches of government?
How old do you need to be to vote?
How many Senators can each state have?
Do citizens have the right to free speech? assembly? religion?
What is the process to amend the constitution?
Of course what Klein really means is that the constitution stands in the way of the "Great Man" government he secretly yearns for.
Putz.
Oh, and when it was written, there were 13 COLONIES.
Double putz.
In the real world, he would be so fired. I wish they would stop comparing the political realm and ivory towers with the real world. It's not helping their cause.
We should save this thread so when it happens, and it will, we can have more snickers and giggles about the obvious.
"You have to remember that the administrations own estimates place the number of Americans whose policies will have to go away at over 100 million."
"No, it doesn't. Where did you pick this up from?"
GM: it's in the regs this administration published about 3 years ago - their own estimates of what percentage of employer plans will be killed by their very rules.
It's really a shame there's no profession or job to, y'know, read and then report on what the bureaucrats have put in writing that they have planned for us poor citizens - kind of like journalists and the press actually did before they became complete lapdogs and cheerleaders for the Dem party.
GM: it's in the regs this administration published about 3 years ago - their own estimates of what percentage of employer plans will be killed by their very rules.
It doesn't say that.
garage mahal:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2010-06-17/pdf/2010-14488.pdf
It's boring reading and you'll have to work really hard.
The mid-range estimate is that 51% of employer-provide health insurance will be cancelled under Obama-Insurance regulations.
Try harder.
Aha, that is the real reason why the site is not working: too few competent key punchers to punch the punch cards, not enough punch card readers to decipher the punch cards.
Dear Leader is a real genius, he is going to put up his shovel ready buildings to house the tens of thousands of key punchers to fix his website by 2017 and solve the unemployment problem at the same time.
And let me jump out on a limb:
The 51% mid-range estimate is decidedly low. Once a competitor business decides to significantly reduce its fixed costs by dropping employee health insurance (and instead pay a fine) EVERY firm will be forced by competition to do exactly the same thing. This will be of little consequence for upper-management whose incentive packages must be competitively bid. However the middle class will be absolutely, positively shit-hammered by this event.
I would even suggest that some states (and without question some major cities) will drop their employees into the exchanges in order to close financial shortfalls.
The storm is just over the horizon. I suggest everybody make port.
elkh1:
That's probably what happened. In another thread, they are discussing the consequences of putting the old people (i.e. partially alive) out to pasture. Whoops! Too late.
Birkel:
As long as a minority, their minority, is served, disparate impact is of no consequence.
Not knowing the difference between a punch list and a punch card isn't a sign of a lack of real world experience; it's a sign of not having worked in an office in the 1960's.
n.n.
That is exactly so. The lower socio-economic strata will avoid this calamity in the refuge of Medicare/Medicaid.
Thus the richest (mainly Democrats) and the poorest (mainly Democrats) will be most insulated. This is by design.
garage mahal said...
You might want to look into the over 100 million Americans who will be booted from their private and employer-based plans before this is over.
LOL
12/2/13, 2:47 PM
Meade said...
Big Mike said...
"Better watch it, Professor. Ezra's going to complain about your imputed anti-semitism again."
I remember exactly where garage mahal was when Ezra Klein made that complaint.
12/2/13, 2:47 PM
Garage why does the possibility of tens of millions having their coverage's cancelled amuse you?
Meade to cut Garage some slack, his finding Cedaford's comments worth reading doesn't necessarily imply his being in agreement. He might find them interesting in a car wreck sort of way, just like I find his comments interesting in a train wreck sort of way.
American Liberal Elite:
Perhaps Ezra Klein's google subscription has expired and you could do him a solid by buying him a new one.
Call it a Hanukkah present if you're feeling the urge.
I have about a hundred thousand punch cards in the basement.
They're punched in many useful patterns.
Real men program with a magnetized needle and a steady hand. :-)
The mid-range estimate is that 51% of employer-provide health insurance will be cancelled under Obama-Insurance regulations.
The pdf doesn't say that at all. If a policy is changed that is detrimental to the policy holder, it is then subject to ACA basic requirements. Even if a plan loses grandfather status, is still doesn't mean you lose your health care plan.
See, when Ezra Klein calls a disruption "predictable" he's overlooking people like Garage Mahal.
garage: "The pdf doesn't say that at all. If a policy is changed that is detrimental to the policy holder, it is then subject to ACA basic requirements."
LOL
Yeah. "detrimental"...as in "hey you 70 yr old male, why don't you have pregnancy coverage?!! Your policy is hereby deemed 'detrimental'".
This is, of course what all media matters/TPM/Soros-directed trolls say.
garage mahal:
That you don't wish it to say what it does say doesn't make it so. The Obama Administration estimated that 51% of employer-provided health insurance policies would end due to Obama-Insurance regulations.
That is true and your inability to comprehend that truth is comical.
garage: "Even if a plan loses grandfather status, is still doesn't mean you lose your health care plan."
Actually, that's precisely what it means.
As was intended.
You really can't fix this level of nuclear-grade stupid.
On the plus side, the lefties need the "walking dead" like garage to push their talking points everywhere, so garage has that going for him.
I guess it's easier than actually reading the legislation or what the creators of the legislation actually said.
Punch card. Punch list. Who cares. The guy is a Lib-tard. That takes precedence over some inadvertent word choice.
Birkel: "That is true and your inability to comprehend that truth is comical."
What's so amazing is that the obama-ites actually published those findings and yet garage is on here telling us that what we read was not really written and what was said was not really said and what is actually happening is not actually happening.
Imagine. People like garage actually, literally, CHOOSE to accept this bizarre alternate reality.
Leftism is a religion. There is no other possible explanation.
Ralph Hyatt:
Actually, Klein is right about the 13 states bit. The Constitution was written in 1789, after the states realized the Articles of Confederation weren't cutting it. So back to the drawing board to "Create a More Perfect Union."
That makes him just a single putz.
That is true and your inability to comprehend that truth is comical.
If it were true you would have copy/pasted it already. It says nothing about 100 million, or 80 million, or any number of people that going to lose coverage.
Not to mention it's pretty funny that conservatives are suddenly now relying on Obama's words? The biggest LIAR ever!
Obama lied and the website didn't work for a while!
Page 16 of the PDF link given above:
(Since GM couldn't read that far, or comprehend)
"the Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013. The low-end estimates are for 49 percent and 34 percent of small and large employer plans, respectively, to have relinquished grandfather status, and the high-end estimates are 80 percent and 64 percent, respectively."
So there's this Administration's own estimate that around 100M people will lose their grandfathered plans and be dumped into the exchanges by their regs - which is a feature, not a bug.
What's so amazing is that the obama-ites actually published those findings and yet garage is on here telling us that what we read was not really written and what was said was not really said and what is actually happening is not actually happening.
Okay. Just copy and paste from the pdf where it says 100 million will lose their health care plan. I'll wait for you.
Garage. The website was a glitch. What is being discussed now is the catch. The catch is that you get to keep your plan unless the evil insurance company cancels your plan. The evil insurance plan has to cancel your plan because it is the law. That is the catch
Had you not been in the public school system or had you paid attention in college you would have heard of Catch 22. Similar.
Garage. Thiis is the math part. See the post above your last one? Those are percentages of Americans with large and small employer plans. Take it from there. The govt wants you to practice your public education math skills.
garage is reduced to arguing that estimated percentages of a known whole is not equivalent to the raw number that the percentage represents.
He is actually arguing that.
And I bet he doesn't even know that he is.
Which, once again, makes him a PERFECT foot soldier of the left.
Guess what garage, the obamacare legislation does not contain the words "death panel", yet there it is under it's sanitized acronym "IPAB".
Yet garage will argue that it's not in there either.
Even though many on the left who have read the legislation are fessing up to this fact as well.
It's fascinating to watch on an academic level.
Drago. No, Garage wants the govt to do the math for him. Isnt that what it is there for?
avwh: "So there's this Administration's own estimate that around 100M people will lose their grandfathered plans and be dumped into the exchanges by their regs - which is a feature, not a bug."
Of course.
What's really amusing is that garage is weeks behind on his talking points since all the lefties who are up to speed are arguing that of course all those individuals will be losing their health plans due to the obamacare regulations and of course we all actually knew that before so it means obama didn't lie!
The cognitive dissonance that results from the contradictory and time late talking points is amazing to behold.
Those are percentages of Americans with large and small employer plans. Take it from there. The govt wants you to practice your public education math skills.
Losing grandfather status does not mean you lose your health care policy. You're assuming that 100% of policies that lose grandfather status and 100% of policyholders will lose their plan. It's a ridiculous assertion, but one that gets gobbled up on right wing blogs I bet, without question.
I'm thinking of buying a conservative email list to generate some easy sales leads. They will buy anything.
Garage has obviously been on a vacation the last few weeks and has missed out on the fact that if your plan is not grandfathered it WILL be canceled; and very few policies are grandfathered.
This will be long but I think the numbers are important.
Here is a relevant passages from the Federal Register of 6/17/10:
"Using data from the 2008 Medical Expenditure Survey—Insurance
Component, the Departments estimated
that there are approximately 72,000
large ERISA-covered health plans and
2.8 million small group health plans
with an estimated 97.0 million
participants and beneficiaries in large group plans and 40.9 million participants and beneficiaries in small group plans."
Run the numbers on page 34553 and you find that HHS and Labor believe that between 53 million and 110 million people will not be grandfathered therefore they will have policies canceled and require new policies which - we have discovered - means changes in coverage, premiums and doctor networks.
As an aside the population of the US is about 312 million. HHS and Labor are estimating that as much as 36% of the population is going to be effected (worse coverage/ higher premiums) and this will be happening just prior to the 2014 elections.
garage: "Losing grandfather status does not mean you lose your health care policy. You're assuming that 100% of policies that lose grandfather status and 100% of policyholders will lose their plan. It's a ridiculous assertion, but one that gets gobbled up on right wing blogs I bet, without question."
LOL
Just a little while ago all the really "Informed" lefties were telling everyone that "if you like your plan you can keep your plan, period." and anyone saying anything different was a right wing loony.
It's clear from his comments that garage is at least 6 weeks behind on his talking points.
At least.
Possibly more.
We really do need need a better class of media matters/TPM directed trolls.
Garage. These are the fucking government's numbers! The plans, all of them, have to provide minimum coverages. Losing grandfather status is the governments polite way of telling the insurance cos to dump you.
But go read what Kanye has to say.
hesanh0802: "As an aside the population of the US is about 312 million. HHS and Labor are estimating that as much as 36% of the population is going to be effected (worse coverage/ higher premiums) and this will be happening just prior to the 2014 elections."
Correct, and this is precisely why obama read in the papers that sebelius has delayed the employer mandate.
Of course, businesses are still going to go thru with dumping their employees into the obama-trash exchanges right on schedule.
So here you have major lefties talking openly about how the obama move is good politics for the dems for all the obvious reasons and here is garage arguing that those reasons don't exist!!
Garage has thus set an historically high-bar for stupidity (manufactured or genuine) which easily defeats his previous high bar of "secret routers".
I for one am anxious to see if garage can top even this monumental achievement.
I have complete confidence that he can.
Losing grandfather status is the governments polite way of telling the insurance cos to dump you.
You lose grandfather status because an insurance company CHANGES your plan. Not because evil ObamaKKKare is telling them drop you.
Garage. The insurance co has to change your plan if your plan does not conport with the law.
Comport.
What's puzzling is that he put quotes around it
Not so puzzling, it just shows he understands what a punchcard was and wanted to make a semi-computer-metaphor. I'm not in the habit of defending the boy wonder but I will in this, one, isolated case.
garage mahal:
It's the Obama Administration's "ridiculous" assertion.
Blame Obama!
Garage. The insurance co has to change your plan if your plan does not conport with the law.
They wouldn't be "grandfathered" plans then, would they? If a plan changes that is detrimental to policyholder, i.e higher out of pocket expenses, dropping benefits, they then lose grandfather status. At any rate I've reached my threshold for defending the Heritage Foundation's health care plan.
They have Top Men working on it. Top. Men.
LOL.. he is the journolister guy. You know what! All these people are Obama clones -- no serious depth in their education and life experience, no integrity in their everyday living. No surprise they can relate to Obama so much that they want to lick his feet.
After the reality bitch-slap the Obamacare Kool-aid drinkers have received of late, I am stunned they're still firmly entrenched in their willful ignorance.
Here's a tip. The insurance companies have no vested interest in grandfathering relatively cheap existing insurance policies. Quite the contrary. They want as many of us as possible paying for the far more expensive ACA compliant policies.
"A Lesson learned: Smart programmers stripe the tops of a card deck with a highlighter pen so if the card deck is dropped, the deck can be rebuilt in less than 6 months :)"
Better yet, sequence number the cards and let the system sort utility rearrange them before assembly or compilation.
"The insurance companies have no vested interest in grandfathering relatively cheap existing insurance policies. Quite the contrary. They want as many of us as possible paying for the far more expensive ACA compliant policies."
I'm not so sure. They want policies that actuaries understand. Underwriting Obamacare is going to be an adventure, even assuming it survives largely intact.
It is much easier to design a plan around insurance principles. Catastrophic is easy to underwrite. Pre-existing conditions are not and should be included in risk pools, that, like the French, include only the condition, not all subsequent care.
Send Klein for some squelch grease. We'll never see him again.
Sending a new lieutenant or private to get some squelch grease is a way of gently hazing an impressionable young member of the military. There have been times when the seeker of squelch grease ran all over the base from one straight-faced non-commissioned officer to another trying to find some. Just to be clear, there is no such thing as squelch grease.
Send Klein for some squelch grease. We'll never see him again.
Sending a new lieutenant or private to get some squelch grease is a way of gently hazing an impressionable young member of the military. There have been times when the seeker of quench grease ran all over the base from one straight-faced non-commissioned officer to another trying to find some. Just to be clear, there is no such thing as squelch grease.
Klein may be the stupidest person you can think of. It is a miracle that he is considered the WONK KING of DEMOCRATIC Party. Obama reads him daily. He has not talent. No accomplishment.
Obama said recently he only reads the NY Times.
> At any rate I've reached my threshold for defending the Heritage Foundation's health care plan.
Ignoring whether or not that's true, it's unclear why Garage thinks that "it's Heritage's plan" is relevant.
He seems to think that we should accept anything that Heritage puts out as good. That's interesting because he can't take that position unless he does so as well.
However, even though Garage accepts Heritage has gospel, the rest of us are not obligated to do so.
I used Hollerith cards in my first programming course at UW-Madison in 1978 (SIMULA). As I recall, we were the last class using the keypunch cards.
" At any rate I've reached my threshold for defending the Heritage Foundation's health care plan."
Reading would be good for lefty hacks like garage. The original Heritage plan, 20 years ago, was to mandate a simple catastrophic plan for free riders to reduce the burden on the health care system. They have since decided a mandate is not a good idea.
There was never any idea of the bloated mandates of Obamacare. There is no logical reason for these except the assumption that they were redistribution.
Even Hillarycare did not have this bloat.
'They wouldn't be "grandfathered" plans then, would they? If a plan changes that is detrimental to policyholder, i.e higher out of pocket expenses, dropping benefits, they then lose grandfather status.'
Wrong. He's referring to changes that occur after loss of grandfather status. Virtually any change (including a normal nominal premium increase due simply to offset inflation) causes a plan to lose grandfathered status, which means that very nearly all grandfathered plans...aren't. Upon loss of this status, your plan must now be changed to meet the minimum requirements as set forth by the government, i.e. you can't keep it. IOW, if you like your insurance, you stand a good chance of being forced to give it up. And spare me the bullshit about how you'll be getting a better plan (and more expensive to boot!), like Obama and Sebelius are doing us some great favor. They can't even run a website, I'll be damned if they'll run my life.
If you've ever wondered what a mashup between rank incompetence and devious political power grabs would look like, behold! It's a MUCH bigger clusterfuck than I had imagined, and I have a very vivid imagination.
(You'll notice I carefully and cleverly changed the exact wording of my comment so as not to plagiarize The Heritage Foundation) /sarc
And the hits keep coming. Security was never built into the website. I wonder what "punchcard" this is under?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101225308
The Heritage angle as a mode of attack has met its perfect proponent, garage, typically unaware of the actual original proposal, who made it, and its most current status. This has been the liberal progression from the Romneycare attack as a way to discredit Republican opposition to Obamacare. Too bad its a talking point that's mostly a tell on the user. Idiotic, gullible, and unwilling to actually learn truth for themselves.
Punch cards? An invention of old dead white guys? How racist of the administration.
"At any rate I've reached my threshold for defending the Heritage Foundation's health care plan."
I find it interesting that people who make the "It's a conservative think tank's plan!" argument are basically saying that the Democrat Party is reduced to recycling a THINK TANK's musings in 1993 and discarded by the GOP. No ideas of their own then?
I'm an infrequent visitor to this blog, and have noticed garage's stubborn defense of the left. Not all of his arguments were convincing. Still, the incoherent comments in this post are stunning.
On a blog where I am a more frequent visitor, I saw something just as remarkable. A leftie commenter had no clue that ObamaCare had a number of required coverage items which included pediatric dental care.
He blustered a bit, then attacked insurance companies for charging for the coverage. We haven't heard from him in a couple of weeks. I now suspect he really had no understanding or experience with insurance. Looking back, his passionate diatribes against Sarah Palin, Sen Cruz and Repubs seem ... one dimensional and simplistic.
We just switched to Unity and my plan is getting cheaper and more comprehensive. No idea what role ACA played, if any, but I'd like to think being a good Democrat didnt hurt :-)
Word mis-usage is rampant everywhere it seems! A grandfathered plan loses its GF status if it "changes"... period. Price goes up by a buck, deductibles change, etc. The ACA LOTL says all plans must cover maternity, so selling a plan that doesn't have maternity care is what we like to call ILLEGAL!
Plan Illegal = Plan cancelled = No Insurance. Because of Obamacare. What's not clear about that?
The punch card predates the computer. It was utilized in a tabulating system invented by Herman Hollerith and patented in 1889. It was first used in the 1890 census. Hollerith's company eventually became IBM.
It needed only 600 fixes? I guess the libs were right, Conservatives were making a mountain out of a molehill!
We're awaiting the details garage, this being the first example of cheaper and better we've heard about. I am personally still looking. Feel free to redact names and SSNs.
Hope I'm not being too incoherent for you Jim.
What's so hard to figure out is why Journolists will work so hard to get an invitation to the WH to give, rather than receive, head. But then again, Obama is such a magnificent specimen of a he-man, according to Piers. They just can't wait to slap a lip-lock on this guatamahonda.
garage mahal,
That drug abuse rehab and mental health coverage will really come in handy for you!
"The quickest way to lose respect for journalists is to see them write about something you know well."
Well said. It's even more relevant when applied to politicians. The jaw-dropping nonsense I heard during the debate over the 1994 assault weapons ban ensured I would never take the Democrats seriously again
It's interesting that someone on this thread wrote something like: punch card/punch list, big deal & suggested that it was just a typo.
Of course when Dan Q spelled potato....
And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar & a typo is just a typo, but can you imagine if Limbaugh or Hannity had said that?
Hey punch drunk, punch & judy, punch line... I get 'em all mixed up after I've had some punch.
I also don't know why our devoted propagandist hasn't gotten the message yet as to what to say when ObamaCare's, OOPS, The Affordable Care Act's flaw of the hour comes up.
It's "Racism", "Republican Obstructionism", "SS & Medicare weren't perfect at the start & look at 'em now", (gurgle, gurgle), or all the above.
or razzle dazzle 'em with "so what stats "X number of people have clicked on to the site".
'That drug abuse rehab and mental health coverage will really come in handy for you!'
Sure, but as people have been pointing out, the sky high deductibles come into play ...
I'm convinced writers no longer have editors.
Or their editors are retards.
Or the writers are.
Or both.
It's only because Ann keeps pumping him up. He's a nobody, a hack.
Garage - "We just switched to Unity and my plan is getting cheaper and more comprehensive. No idea what role ACA played, if any, but I'd like to think being a good Democrat didnt hurt :-)"
LIAR
I agree that Garage is off his game. His problem today seems to be that he has ventured into the realm of the factual and verifiable rather than the content free snark he has traditionally dispensed here.
Obamacare Potemkin Village website continues to amaze.
Dropping a stack of those cards was a nightmare.
This is why the rubber band was invented, possibly.
Although the healthcare act originated with a Democratic president and was passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress in 2010, Republicans across the country are significantly more familiar with it than are Democrats. This could reflect the desire among those who are most emotionally opposed to the law to know more about it, or underlying differences in attention to news across party groups. [Gallup]
No wonder garage knows so little about the law. He's just like the rest of the zombie mook progs who march mindlessly along.
Why even use punchlist? Checklist, I think, is the more accepted, common term. We just learned not to use big confusing words in journalism.
WaPo,above the fold
Kiss your identity goodbye!
The quickest way to lose respect for journalists is to see them write about something you know well.
Sad thing is, a lot of people know that. And they still assume that the reporters DO know what they're talking about on the subjects the readers do not. My mom, who teaches nursing (and has done so for over 30 years) is baffled as to the basic medical mistakes in reporting...but assumes the reporting on international news is likely correct.
I'm just glad our long national nightmare of the healthcare website not working properly is finally over.
Can you explain what this is based on? Because the only people saying it are the WH and their hacks and, well, they haven't exactly had good records of truth-telling in this whole affair.
garage, simple question: We've had two competing theories on how this would work out.
Which ones has been pretty damned accurate so far and which one was been a series of pipe dreams to date?
Sometimes it's just a simple typo, but sometimes when a journalist uses a wrong word it's a "tell" that he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. I'm thinking about articles dealing with firearms that refer to such things as "high capacity magazine clips," or confuse semiautomatic with full auto. Just the other day, Tim Blair, at the Daily Telegraph, noted a reference to "axle grinders" being used to cut demonstrators' chains.
Dropping a stack of those cards was a nightmare.
This is why the rubber band was invented, possibly.
True; until your stack gets to be several inches thick. The trick was to put rubber bands around smaller stacks and them more around bigger stacks. But, when taking those rubber bands off, accidents happen.
400 out of 600 fixed... thats 66% or a D grade.
Now there is an old saying 90 percent of the work takes 10 percent of the effort and the other 10 percent of the work takes 90 percent of the effort. Sounds to me like they are not even 10 percent through what needs to be done to make it a safe useful site.
This idea expressed above that ‘punchcards’ weren't extensively in use after the 60's and 70's is false. Remember the 2000 election and the hanging chads? Those chads were hanging from a kind of punchcard — punched out individually by voters in elections all across the country for many years, and continuing until only a relative few years ago. (I expect they're still used in some places.) How quickly people forget!
Ernie,
"Tim Blair, at the Daily Telegraph, noted a reference to 'axle grinders' being used to cut demonstrators' chains."
Hilarious! Anyone who knows anything knows that the proper term is "ankle grinder"!
My first experience in computer programming (1975, in 5th grade) was done by bubbling in punch cards with a #2 pencil. One line of FORTRAN code per card.
We would turn in our stack of cards to the teacher who would proceed to have them sent downtown to the LAUSD mainframe to be run. Three days later we would get our printouts, hopefully with actual output instead of a syntax error (because you didn't fill in a bubble completely) message. That really sucked.
Worse yet was 10 pages of endless loop. That pissed off the teacher and administrators something fierce.
Kirk Parker said...
Ernie,
"Tim Blair, at the Daily Telegraph, noted a reference to 'axle grinders' being used to cut demonstrators' chains."
Hilarious! Anyone who knows anything knows that the proper term is "ankle grinder"!
Angle
Rusty,
I think you need to send in your humor module for major service...
Although the healthcare act originated with a Democratic president and was passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress in 2010, Republicans across the country are significantly more familiar with it than are Democrats. This could reflect the desire among those who are most emotionally opposed to the law to know more about it, or underlying differences in attention to news across party groups. [Gallup]
I cannot speak for anyone else, but as soon as the proposed law was available for download, I did so. Too many people, left and right, were making all these claims about the law, and I wanted to see for myself what was in it.
So, I read the first 300+ pages. And what I saw was perverse incentive after perverse incentive after perverse incentive. From what I had read, I knew plans would get canceled, that rates would go up, that appointments with doctors would be harder to get, that people would get laid off, that part timers would have their hours cut.
This nightmare is only just beginning. Garage and his ilk can continue to drink the Kool-aid. Reality is coming, in spite of their denial of it.
Kirk Parker said...
Rusty,
I think you need to send in your humor module for major service...
Doh!
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