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CNN has released a report that the main Healthcare.gov contractor CGI warned the Obama administration one month in advance that there were critical problems preventing them from ensuring a clean launch of the website. In particular, the administration was warned that testing was being obstructed. The quote from the CGI memo leaves no doubt, if you understand the technical jargon used in the memo. I’ll take it apart and explain just how bad this situation really was. Here’s the quote from the memo, which CNN says was listed as a ‘severe’ concern: __________________________ CGI does not have access to necessary...

This Reuters headline is not good news for the administration: Frustrated by Healthcare.gov, some consumers buy off exchange Americans are abandoning the healthcare.gov site and buying insurance the old fashioned way; calling the companies directly. Since its launch on October 1, technical problems have stalled Healthcare.gov, the website meant to help millions of uninsured Americans sign up for coverage as part of the biggest U.S. social program since Medicare plans for the elderly launched in the 1960s. Nearly a dozen insurance companies offering plans on the exchange who were interviewed by Reuters say they have received at most a trickle...

Ten Senate Democrats sent a letter to Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Friday urging her to extend the ObamaCare enrollment deadline because of the problems plaguing the ObamaCare website. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) initiated the letter. Earlier this week, she emerged as the first Senate Democrat to publicly call for a delay to the healthcare law to accommodate consumers experiencing issues with the website. “As long as these substantial technology glitches persist, we are losing valuable time to educate and enroll people in insurance plans,” the letter reads in part. “Our constituents are frustrated, and we fear...

Instinctively I always agreed with William F. Buckley Jr. that, “I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” Watching the implosion of HealthCare.gov, I now know it for a fact.Would those first 2,000 people have the temerity to waste half a billion dollars on an IT infrastructure that doesn’t work remotely as advertised and then blame political opposition that had no part in its creation for its failure?Would those 2,000 say with a straight face...

Ted Cruz is unbowed. The Texas Senator, speaking at The American Spectator’s annual Washington gala Wednesday evening, was nothing if not resolute in his attacks on the disaster that has become Obamacare. “Should we have fought this fight?” he asked, his resounding yes coming by way of citing the differences between the way the disaster of Obamacare is perceived in Washington and out in the country. “If you get out of Washington there’s no ambiguity” on the question, Cruz said. “This thing isn’t working. It is a disaster and a disaster that is hurting people right now…. On the merits...

"...........Many people shopping for themselves or for small companies have called insurance brokers for help in accessing HealthCare.gov. Brokers were eager to oblige but soon found themselves stymied.“I’ve seen absolutely no improvement in the weeks that we’ve been trying to work through this,”said..Goodwin,a broker who heads the Goodwin Benefits Group in Dallas. “But we have it, and we have to live with it. I’m hoping against hope they will find a way to fix this. I’m just not confident that they can.”Some insurance agents are advising clients to avoid the federal marketplace altogether unless they think they are eligible for...

The new “See Plans Now” feature on HealthCare.gov, created as one of President Obama’s “improvements” to a site plagued by technical flaws, seriously underestimates the cost of insurance for most users. The Obama administration rolled out the new application on Sunday following weeks of complaints from site visitors, who were unable to create an account and therefore could not view or compare health-care plans. “Americans across the country can type in their ZIP code and shop and browse, and see what the options are that are out there available to them to comparison-shop and begin to make decisions,” White House...

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield is being forced to cancel plans that currently cover 76,000 individuals in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., due to changes made by President Obama's health care law, the company told the Washington Examiner today. That represents more than 40 percent of the 177,000 individuals covered by CareFirst in those states. Though Obama famously promised that those who liked their health care coverage could keep it under his program, in reality, the health care law imposes a raft of new regulations on insurance policies starting Jan. 1 that are forcing insurers across the country to terminate existing plans....

A surge in government spending in the six months before the ObamaCare exchanges went live pushed federal spending to top government contractors over the $1 billion mark, a new study finds. According to the report released Thursday by Bloomberg Government analyst Peter Gosselin, federal spending ramped up in the months leading up to Oct. 1, with $352 million of the $1 billion in federal contracts to the top 10 ObamaCare contractors awarded during this time. “In a typical IT project, spending ramps up to a peak, then trails off during the final phase,” Gosselin wrote. The price tag usually associated...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The principal contractors responsible for the federal government's troubled health insurance website say the Obama administration shares responsibility for snags that have crippled the system. Executives of CGI Federal, which built the federal HealthCare.gov website serving 36 states, and QSSI, which designed the part that verifies applicants' income and other personal details, were testifying Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. As the hearing began, Republican committee members said the website problems are symptomatic of deeper flaws in the Affordable Care Act, and they accused administration officials of misleading Congress with repeated assurances that the rollout...

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...

As NewsBusters has been reporting, late night comics are having a field day with the disastrous rollout of the President’s health insurance exchanges. NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno began the program Tuesday saying it’s “easier to join al Qaeda using their website than it [is] to sign up for ObamaCare” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

"...Sebelius was dutifully giving her canned responses to Gupta's less than penetrating questions when she dropped a jaw dropper; President Obama was unaware of problems with healthcare.gov before the site went live on October 1.[SNIP]It must give the White House a warm and fuzzy feeling to know that no one in the mainstream press is going to call them out for this blatant lie. Or question how it is that the White House was told repeatedly as far back as March that there were monumental technical problems with the website and no one bothered to tell the boss.As with all...

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday that there was "no question we did not anticipate the scale of problems" with the ObamaCare website, following an admission by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that President Obama was unaware of the technical problems HealthCare.gov would face upon its debut. "While we knew there would be some glitches and actually said publicly there could be some problems, we did not know until the problems manifested themselves after the launch they would be as significant as they turned out to be," Carney said. The White House press secretary admitted that...

"Just fix it." That's the boiled-down message coming from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday, as Democrats are scrambling to put out the wildfire of criticism and attention aimed at the botched rollout of ObamaCare's federal insurance website. In a press briefing where reporters asked about no other topic, Pelosi acknowledged that the problems dogging users trying to enroll in insurance plans on the HealthCare.gov website are "beyond glitches." But the trouble, she quickly added, "does not take away from the fact that we're on a path" toward installing the many benefits under the law. "The situation right...

Bob Herbert, a former New York Times columnist and current fellow at the left-wing Demos think tank, warned that the failures of Obamacare online exchanges could negatively affect the current administration as Hurricane Katrina did the Bush administration. Herbert called the rollout “a real disaster” and said that it made “the administration look incompetent.”......

House Republicans will receive a briefing from Health and Human Services officials about the glitch-filled Obamacare website after being excluded from a meeting in which Democrats were given details about the troubled launch. “It’s not clear why Republicans were excluded in the first place, but we look forward to getting answers to how the administration botched this enormous use of taxpayer dollars so badly,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Gary Cohen, who handles insurance oversight for HHS, briefed House Democrats earlier Wednesday. Buck said he would announce details of the Republican meeting when they become...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi believes the new health care law should move forward without delay and said that "sabotage" by Republicans, and not just computer glitches, is hindering implementation. Pelosi said the offices of some Republican lawmakers "are not giving information to constituents for how they can avail themselves" of the new program. Republicans are withholding the information, Pelosi said, "to undermine the Affordable Care Act." Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the GOP had nothing to do with the troubled rollout. “The problems with Healthcare.gov, the associated 1-800 phone number, and the ‘chat’...

Looking to combat headlines dominated by the technical problems plaguing the ObamaCare website, top Obama administration officials will fan out across the country to sell the American public on signing up for insurance under the law. "We are planning to deploy White House officials and Cabinet secretaries to the 10 cities across the country with the highest rates of uninsured Americans to do enrollment events and other grassroots activities," a White House official told CNN on Wednesday. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will participate in the blitz, with two stops in Texas and another in Phoenix, Ariz., later...

House Democrats downplayed the significance of problems facing ObamaCare's enrollment system after their first post-rollout meeting with administration officials. Democratic lawmakers appeared upbeat after leaving a presentation from Gary Cohen, a key figure in ObamaCare's implementation at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). "We didn't work our hearts out for a website," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), quoting House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "The route in, that's a technical issue that we think is being solved," Schakowsky said. There was also no discussion of delaying ObamaCare's individual mandate, according to members — a possibility that's been floated...