Saturday, October 26, 2013

Kirsten Powers Lets Fly

Kirsten Powers is fast becoming every conservative’s favorite liberal. She has unimpeachable integrity and always tells it like it is.

Yesterday, she explained the stakes in the Obamacare website fiasco. Only a true liberal could experience the anguish Powers feels when she sees that her faith in big government  is being discredited by ineptitude.

Powers wrote:

The rollout of the insurance exchange that is central to the success of the Affordable Care Act has been nothing short of a disaster. This failure is a double whammy: it puts the future of Obamacare in even greater peril while placing Obama’s case for activist government on life support. If the government can’t build a functioning website to support the most important initiative of the president’s administration, then how can it be trusted to do anything?

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told The Wall Street Journal that the botched launch of the $400 million website was “another challenge that’s no worse than the near-death experiences” the health-care law has seen over the past three years. But it is a million times worse, because it’s self-inflicted. This time, Obama can’t blame Republicans. 

Obviously, there are still a few aspiring propagandists trying to defend the Obama administration, but increasingly, it is not playing. Powers knows as everyone should that Obama cannot blame anyone but himself.

There comes a time in every man’s life when he is forced to take responsibility for his actions. Perhaps that time is here for Barack Obama. Then again, maybe not.

Powers is on a roll here:

The administration had to know it had only one shot to launch the exchanges, and it blew it. The damage it has caused was captured in a Washington Post–ABC News poll released Monday. Fifty-six percent of those surveyed believed the “website glitches” are “part of a broader problem with the health care law.”

What makes it worse is that officials knew they weren’t ready, and they went forward anyway. The Associated Press reported that “Website builders saw red flags for months.” The Washington Post recounted, “Days before the launch of President Obama’s online health ­insurance marketplace, government officials and contractors tested a key part of the Web site to see whether it could handle tens of thousands of consumers at the same time. It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously. Despite the failed test, federal health officials plowed ahead.” Sebelius admitted Monday that the website “didn’t have enough testing, specifically for high volumes, for a complicated project.”

What have they been doing for the last few years? The administration has claimed that it can’t be helped that setting up an insurance exchange is so complex. Sebelius even lamented that she wished she had “five years” to finish this project. Who needs five years to build a website? This isn’t a search for the cure for cancer.

Worse yet, the administration did not seem to know what was going on until it all came crashing down around them:

In the week leading up to the launch of the exchanges, Obama assured Americansthat using the health insurance hub would be as easy as buying a plane ticket online.  Apparently he wasn’t in on what was happening behind the scenes. Sebelius told CNN that the first the president heard of problems was in “the first couple of days” after the site went live October 1. If this is true, then either the president didn’t ask about the site’s capabilities or someone lied to him. If the former is true, then he has an incredible lack of imagination and curiosity. If the latter is the case, then why hasn’t anyone been fired?

True to form, the Most Transparent Administration in History has not been particularly forthcoming about the problems the site faces. At firs, it claimed these were just minor glitches caused by unexpectedly high traffic. The president famously compared these glitches to those that Apple has experienced in the past. He might be interested to know that Apple fired the manager responsible for the last major snafu the company encountered.

For now, the administration is hard at work trying to find a scapegoat.

The Daily Caller has its own nominee for the job.

It turns out that the company that was awarded the no-bid contract for website construction has, as one of its senior vice presidents, an old college chum of Michelle Obama.

It’s so hard to believe that the Obama administration botched the website that was going to sell its signature legislative achievement because Mrs. Obama wanted to help out an old friend.

Yet, stranger things have happened.

For now, we will greet the news with skepticism, but still….

7 comments:

Dennis said...

The web portal should have been the easy part. One wonders what awaits behind the incompetence shown here?

Stuart Schneiderman said...

Exactly... one does suspect that the rest will be even more horrifying. It looks like the American people are about to get mugged by reality.

Sam L. said...

Well, Benghazi Barry did farm the job out to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who subcontracted to various minions and henchmen, so there's plenty of people to share the blame, but Barry's #1 and Nancy and Harry are co-#2s (no matter how bad that sounds, heh, heh, heh).

Sam L. said...

I heard NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell me dissing O'care this afternoon. Words getting around.

Anonymous said...

It's humorous that Obama and Holder say that asking people to have a picture ID to vote is onerous, racist and unconstitutional. Meanwhile, you must have picture ID to visit either of them in a government building. Yet they simultaneously suggest that everyone sign up for the benefits of this "signature" legislation on a website. Do the nation's poor have universal internet access? If this kind of access is presumed, or they are expected to be able to get online, don't we think they are capable of going to the DMV to apply for a free picture ID???

Tip

Anonymous said...

Incompetence, cronyism, & corruption aside (I'm convinced my Pa's WW2 generation leaders were better in all fields) - I worry about loss of freedom.

I may risk sounding like a crank, but govt Elites since Hillary have Lusted to control Health Care. It gives them immense power over our lives.

The Time cover story on Bloomberg was chilling. He meets with world plutocrats to plan campaigns to control the hoi polloi.

Europe & Japan spend 50% less on Health Care because they ration, delay, lowball, & flatly refuse treatment to smokers, obese, & other sinners.

If you're over 50, no dialysis or other expensive procedures, esp End of Life. If your baby is born sick or disabled ... go to Religious Counselor & mortician.

I don't think all of above is unwise. But - he who pays the piper, calls the tune. I'd disrelish Hillary & Bloomberg as my Patrones.

At 67, I see our Liberties being whittled away. Perhaps it's inevitable. But I don't like it. -- Rich

The Dark Lord said...

At this point the best case scenario is we end up with hospitals from the movie Idiocracy and the in worst case scernario we end up with Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber ...