Posted on 10/24/2013 1:08:16 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Ignore most conservatives attacking Healthcare.gov -- but it's a mistake to assume Obama's got it under control
"............Liberals are contributing to the ongoing public relations fiasco, but that’s a good thing for the law. If the only people making noise about Healthcare.gov were its avowed enemies, decision makers in the administration would be much more likely to create false bases for denying the extent of the challenges. If Ezra Klein and Ryan Lizza say Healthcare.gov is a giant mess and the stakes for fixing it enormous, they’re likelier to listen, and respond as best they can.
*********[Now the real point of Beutler's piece]***********
........... It pains me to say this, but I think Joan is giving Obama and his administration too much credit in assuming they have a handle on the essence and scope of the problems. Obviously they know it’s bad. But it’s still unclear why they were so blindsided, and what precise steps they have taken to assure that trusted intermediaries with technical expertise are giving Obama a clear-eyed assessment of the challenges now that the site is live and the open-enrollment period slowly closing.
We know that Obama has assembled a tech team, including some trusted outside experts, to fix Healthcare.gov. Hopefully some of them are providing Obama and his top aides a better-than-blinkered assessment of the architecture and how long it will take to repair. Hopefully that’s why Obama pronounced with such confidence on Monday morning at the White House that the site will be fixed.
But we don’t really know for sure.
About a month ago, I attended a background briefing with senior administration officials — both communicators and policy experts — in advance of Healthcare.gov’s big launch. It was clear they believed there’d be some snags, but it was also clear that they believed the site’s problems would be fixable and that it would be the main point of access for consumers before the end of the year.
Yesterday, at a similar briefing, officials de-emphasized the importance of the website and, three weeks after launch, said that they’ve deployed more human resources to enroll people via other channels. They were unable to provide layman’s explanations of the site’s architectural flaws, and if they’re confident that it would be working well enough to provide consumers a reliably decent experience in short order, they didn’t convey it in the West Wing on Monday.
One official did say, “It’s our expectation that the ability of folks to go through beginning to end will be sufficiently enhanced by the time we hit November that folks can go through.” That would moot a lot of the concerns, and most of the concern trolling, too. But the officials also said that problems were still being diagnosed, which suggests they don’t necessarily have a complete grasp of their extent, and can’t be sure that fixes won’t create a cascade of new problems.
I asked whether there’s any chance that the system can’t be fixed with serial tweaks.
“We don’t believe that to be the case,” the official said.
The officials said that they’re not yet drafting contingency plans, in the event that the technical challenges prevent them from enrolling enough people to make the markets viable. But they also emphasized that the law gives the administration latitude to relax certain provisions if they ever reach that point
“The law as written provides a great deal of flexibility to make sure that no one who is trying to get insurance, or can’t afford insurance … that you are not going to pay a penalty.”
If we’re really not facing the possibility that the site won’t be working by early next year, why would the law’s flexibility matter?
Being sanguine about these issues won’t get them resolved any faster, and won’t do anything to prevent the administration from becoming dispirited and letting the window they have to buoy the system close.
No matter what the press has done, nobody who’s actually in the market for insurance would have mistaken the rollout for a success, and what ultimately matters is making sure the website becomes a reliable service for consumers. Without enough consumers the law won’t work right and if it doesn’t work right the recriminations will be thousands of times worse — for Obama, Democrats, liberalism and the uninsured — than they have been so far.
The sub-title "Ignore most conservatives attacking Healthcare.gov -- but it's a mistake to assume Obama's got it under control," is the meat of the piece - where he shows that he's not going to spin it and that he "believes his lying eyes" that Obamacare is a giant mess.
If the only people making noise about Healthcare.gov were its avowed enemies, decision makers in the administration would be much more likely to create false bases for denying the extent of the challenges.Devastating self indictment of the Left.
The Left will begin to spin it that there is a bi-partisan effort to fix this turkey.
Conservatives need to get on their soapboxes and talk about REPEAL - continue to use bullhorns to report that more people are LOSING their health insurance coverage because this money sink, unworkable Obamacare fiasco has given their insurance carries the green light to ditch them - how now (thanks to the Dems that voted for this and forced it on us) they’re exposed and vulnerable.
Conservatives need to explain healthcare saving accounts and how these accounts will be theirs (and their heirs) to control (medical decisions will be theirs not the IRS) and the savings will go into their pockets NOT into the goverment Obamacare money pit - make the case there is still time to save the best private healthcare system in the world. They need to proudly explain that 25 states have stood in the breach and are holding the line - that court cases are moving through the courts that could stop this train wreck.
300 million Americans will be facing a fine from the IRS, even if they signed up cause the glitches won’t be fixed, but the IRS is eagerly awaiting to send out its enforcement brigade armed to the teeth and with the power to take away EVERYTHING you own.
At the very least I doubt more than 3 million will actually be integrated into the system, the rest will get sticker shock but the majority of conservative American patriots will just ignore the whole thing like a runaway spam mail delivery.
We will laugh at Obama, at the IRS and should they actually enforce it well lets assume anything can get out of control pretty darn quick.
Conservative lawmakers need to raise the roof with alarm about Americans who have been left in a health insurance black hole (kicked off their plans by their insurer or company) by Obamacare lies (many now thankfully exposed by this unfolding story of Democrat incompetence and malice).
I can just barely and I mean just barely predict all the lawyers across America what is going through their minds lately, and what they think is the near future outcome.
As this onion is peeled, more and more will be reveled.
Obama and his administration and Ried-Pelosi must keep this from happening.
The battle lines are clearly drawn.
Where will the GOP-e line up?
Cruz and Co. have come on the scene like the U.S. Calvary - House and Senate Republicans need to cheer their arrival.
“The president needs to man up, find out who was responsible, and fire them.”—Rep. Richard Nolan, D-Minn.,
can you tell he’s up for re-election?
No matter whether they fix it or not, the question that should be planted in every citizen’s mind over and over is this:
In a system so full of flaws and now at best cobbled together, do you want to divulge mountains of your personal information at the risk of losing your identity to thieves?
To paraphrase slightly McAfee, “a hacker’s wet dream.”
Bump!
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