Fed up with a dysfunctional health exchange operated by Xerox, Nevada officials voted to terminate the contract and transfer responsibility to the federal government.
Nevada joins Oregon, Maryland and Massachusetts as states who have scrapped their original state-based exchanges because of exceedingly poor performance.
The next domino to fall may be Hawaii, whose ObamaCare exchange – the Hawaii Health Connector – has registered just 8,500 people but needs at least 150,000 enrollees to ensure the program is self-sustaining.
However tonight’s government shutdown/showdown plays out, tomorrow’s big news is likely to be how well the 51 ObamaCare insurance exchanges are performing.
Projections don’t look pretty, according to the New York Times.
A few of the low-lights include:
· The District of Columbia will not be able to determine online whether people qualify for Medicaid or for a federal subsidy (the difference is crucial)
· In Nevada, a Spanish-language version of the exchange’s website will not be ready until mid-November
· In Maryland, small businesses will not be able to buy insurance for their employees until January
Rocky King, Oregon’s exchange director and winner of the Mr. Honesty award, tells the Times, “I have no idea what this thing’s going to look like on Oct. 1. We could crash and burn and have to close it down.”
Clean energy is the dream that refuses to die. From the Obama Administration on down, liberal politicians throughout the nation are constantly promising “green jobs” boomlets, acting as though the only thing standing between a better future where energy is both cleaner and more affordable is political will and obstructionist special interests. In reality, the real hurdle to achieving their dream is substantially higher: the economics just don’t work out. A recent initiative in Nevada shows the complete fiscal folly underpinning clean tech. From the Las Vegas Sun:
The electricity produced by NV Energy’s $46 million wind rebate program has fallen far short of expectations.
In a startling example, the city of Reno’s wind turbines — for which the city received more than $150,000 in rate-payer funded rebates — produced dramatically less electricity than the manufacturers of its turbines promised.
…
As first reported by the Reno Gazette-Journal, one turbine that cost the city $21,000 to install saved the city $4 on its energy bill. Overall, $416,000 worth of turbines have netted the city $2,800 in energy savings.
That means that the savings from the Nevada program have equaled only about 2/3 of 1% of the cost of installing the turbines. Remind me again, isn’t the oft-cited goal for this new era of technological progress to promote science and math?
Count us surprised here at CFIF that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has any hangups about the current state of the economy. Remember, this is the man who said last year that without him the world would have slumped into a global depression. Apparently, though, the senior senator from Nevada has now realized there is a crisis — too little government spending going towards public employees:
9.1 percent of Americans are currently unemployed, as are 13.4 percent of Senator Reid’s fellow Nevadans. “Just fine”, we suppose, is a relative concept.
Should she be successful, Angle may find the House a better fit than the Senate because of the lower chamber’s greater maneuverability for colorful members.
Pity Rory Reid. The son of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Rory is the luckless family scion getting blown out in his race for Nevada governor. The newest Rasmussen Reports poll finds the younger Reid down 20 points to former federal judge Brian Sandoval.
Maybe Rory should have built up more chips with organized labor like his dear old dad. According to multiple reports, the elder Reid is enjoying all kinds of “thanks-for-the-memories” tributes such as gift cards and free food for pro-Reid votes. If Senator Reid hangs onto his seat, his son should remember that liberal success comes from union largesse.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D – Nevada), who foolishly said in 2007 “this war is lost” just as the surge was winning in Iraq, just had another one of those “he didn’t really just say that, did he?” moments.
A local reporter raised the issue of high unemployment in Nevada’s hard-hit construction sector, noting that construction companies often find it easier to hire illegal aliens. To this, Reid bizarrely replied, “any information you have in that regard is absolutely without foundation.” The reporter then cited a Pew Hispanic Center study showing that 17% of construction workers are illegal aliens, to which Reid replied even more absurdly, “that may be someplace, but it’s not here in Nevada.”
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