I listened to the congressional hearings on the Obamacare web site today. I was really, really impressed -- by the amount of butt-kissing and outright rudeness displayed by various elected officials, and by the tremendous difficulty in obtaining any real information of value.
I did hear one piece of hard data that caught my attention. According to Secretary Sebelius, the healthcare.gov site will be able to process up to 17,000 applications per hour. That's a lot, right?
Uh, not really.
Let's think this through, and do a little basic math. 17,000 x 24 hours = 408,000 per day.
Now, the 2012 Census says we have roughly 313.9 million citizens. If those citizens aren't covered by a healthcare plan at work, they have to obtain insurance elsewhere - either directly from an insurance company or through the exchanges under healthcare.gov.
For the sake of argument, let's say that 10% of the population has to use healthcare.gov. That's 31.39 million people. At the theoretical throughput of 408 thousand per day, it would take about 77 days to get that 31 million people enrolled.
Unfortunately, no computer runs at 100% throughput, 24 hours per day. Based on my experience, it's more likely to average around 20% because of time zones, night, weekends. etc. That would mean that it will probably take around 385 days - more than an entire year - to get 31 million people enrolled.
But, what if more than 10% of the populace needs to use healthcare.gov? If 3 out of 10 people needed to get insurance from an exchange (because they don't have an employer-sponsored group insurance), it would take nearly four years to get all those people enrolled.
Sorry to point this out, folks, but -- as we say down south -- THAT DOG DON'T HUNT!
But, to be fair, I guess I'll have to give them a D+ for effort...<sigh>. I guess their math skills need some touching up.
Maybe that helps to explain our budget mess?
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