HealthCare.gov: How Political Fear Was Pitted Against Technical Needs

Wa Po ^ | 10/2/13 | Amy Goldstein and Juliet Eilperin

[giotto]

Unfortunately, they nixed the comments. Where it says “Add your comments,” a little black caption ballon says “Loading...” Funny how, even in their absence, the comments tell the real story.

[Grampa Dave]

One of our younger relatives with a real degree to get and keep jobs, is/was a construction project manager for companies that do large projects.

About 10 years ago he was wooed by a competitor company to come to work for them as a lead cpm for a large part of a big state.

Besides his negotiations re salary, benefits, time off and bonuses, he demanded that under his leadership, there would be zero new contracts with any governmental agency unless they paid up front.

That was a big sticking point, and the company fnally agreed.

He came to work and after a couple of years, finally got all the late and unpaid bills from various governmental agencies collected.

Then, the financial meltdown happened, and the company struggle to stay afloat due late and poor pay from the various governmental agencies in the rest of the area covered by his company..

He basically kept the company afloat as his area was in the black and stayed there. Two years ago, he was promoted to a senior vp level. They wanted him to bring his no governmental contracts unless they paid up front to the rest of the company.

The company is doing very well now using his philosophy.

“Larry Summers, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, and Peter Orzag, head of the Office of Management and Budget, had just received a pointed four-page memo from a trusted outside health adviser. It warned that no one in the administration was “up to the task” of overseeing the construction of an insurance exchange and other intricacies of translating the 2,000-page statute into reality.

Summers, Orzag and their staffs agreed. For weeks that spring, a tug of war played out inside the White House, according to five people familiar with the episode. On one side, members of the economic team and Obama health-care adviser Zeke Emanuel lobbied for the president to appoint an outside health reform “czar” with expertise in business, insurance and technology. On the other, the president’s top health aides — who had shepherded the legislation through its tortuous path on Capitol Hill and knew its every detail — argued that they could handle the job.

In the end, the economic team never had a chance: The president had already made up his mind, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid. Obama wanted his health policy team — led by Nancy-Ann De­Parle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform — to be in charge of the law’s arduous implementation. Since the day the bill became law, the official said, the president believed that “if you were to design a person in the lab to implement health care, it would be Nancy-Ann.”

[sheana]

The 4th step on there is where the stupid really sets in. They shouldn’t be checking crap. They should have simply done a ‘based on the information given by you blah blah blah’ and then put them in contact with the insurance company to verify all that info. That is how everything else is done.

[Finny]

Don’t use “single payer in discussions or comments. “Low information voters” won’t understand what it means, and it actually sounds rather nice and simple. “Great, a ‘single payer’ will pay for my medical care. As long as it’s not me, I’m all for it.”

Instead, always call it National Socialist healthcare rationing. (With or without the caps.) This drives the proggys insane with anger, and they can’t help but object to that terminology. Their anger steers them directly into several rhetorical traps, actually quicksand. When they object, simply ask them which part they object to, the National, or the Socialist? Enjoy, while they sputter and fume with rage.

Then the too-clever-by-half among them will accuse you of not even understanding the difference between socialism/Communism and socialism/Fascism. When they bring this up, they have jumped into the tar pit, because we win every time when the debate is reduced to discussing whether National Socialist healthcare rationing more closely resembles the Communist or the Nazi model.

Excellent! Thanks!

[dearolddad]

0bama is the kind of person who would think about constructing human beings in laboratories.

Didn't someone once say that the camel is a horse designed by a committee?

[steve86]

I still see the comments. In my case I had to disable Noscript temporarily.

[Marine_Uncle]

RE: "This is going to be a classic example for Project
Managers of HOW Very Large Projects go BAD<>>>BAD>>>>BAD!

I wouldn't want to argue against that statement.