White House: the healthcare.gov website is like, totally ready for December first…
A “big health care marketing campaign” had been planned for December (at your expense, you lucky taxpayers!) to further sell the program to the reluctant public. But that’s been postponed for fear it would be too successful and actually drive too many people to the site and cause embarrassing crashes. How many is “too many”? The article says the site can take 50,000 users at a time, which doesn’t seem like a whole lot to me for a national website of such magnitude.
But what the article doesn’t state is whether the website can actually handle sign-ups and then integrate the information accurately to the insurance companies who ultimately must be heavily involved. My recollection is that this “back-end” part of the website was a particular problem, not just the front end of people gaining access to it.
To show you what a big problem this could remain, even Matt Yglesias, no right-winger, remains puzzled and concerned about it and calls the administration’s messaging on this issue “pretty cagey.”
Nor does the White House seem to be breathing a word about the serious security problems that have plagued the site and whether they have been fixed. However, the White House manages to have the time and energy to castigate those states which have refused the Medicaid expansion and to call their motivations for doing so completely political (itself a purely political argument—but hey, projection’s the name of the game):
“Nearly half of states are so locked into the politics of Obamacare that they’re willing to leave nearly 5.4 million of their own people uninsured,” the White House website says…
“There is no justification for continuing to block Medicaid expansion,” Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, said last week in a conference call for Kansas journalists.
It’s one thing to disagree with the justification, which is fiscal: the governors who have refused do not trust the government to continue to foot the bill, and since they have to shoulder the burden if the feds reneg on their end of the deal (can’t imagine why they’d think there’s any chance of that), they are exercising their SCOTUS-protected right to push back against the federal government’s desire to force them to do so. The White House’s statement condemning not just their decisions but their motivations for those decisions is just business as usual for the Obama and company.
I was thinking today that Obama and his helpmates lie so often and so globally and reflexively that I wonder if they can even discern when they are lying and when they are not.
[ADDENDUM: Oh, and by the way, says the White House—you small businesses, there’s no need to rush to the website at all. In fact, we’re delaying your online sign-ups at the federal exchanges for a year.]
“I was thinking today that Obama and his helpmates lie so often and so globally and reflexively that I wonder if they can even discern when they are lying and when they are not.”
Ditto! I have thought this often as well. I’m no psychiatrist; but, don’t real narcissists actually believe what they say? Sort of like they live in their own made-up reality and cannot tell fact from fiction.
Why do I get the impression that they’ve just been stalling for time and hoping for a miracle?
(And don’t tell me that it’s because they’ve just been stalling for time and hoping for a miracle [smile].)
Do they really have *no* *clue* what the h#ll they’re doing? — if perchance they do, they’re doing a helluva job hiding it.
Dems trusted Obama to execute. Now they are in a very tight spot. Do they want to see the web site fixed? Do they really want Obamacare to succeed? If tens of millions have their health insurance plans canceled, they are going to get killed in the next elections. And that is just the start. They will be blamed for every problem down the road.
There’s two levels to this issue. The website disaster and cancellations is the ‘upper level’. The deeper level is the consequences to attempting to provide health care to all regardless of the ability to pay. A degraded level of quality in health care and bureaucratic death panels are the most serious consequence with much more expensive health care the more immediate concern, especially for the healthy.
I strongly suspect that the unhappiness with Obamacare among the low-info public centers on the upper level. For those voters, fixing the website and replacing cancelled policies with tax payer subsidized health plans will ameliorate much of the unhappiness. Gradually, Obamacare’s negatives on the deeper levels might penetrate the low-info voter’s awareness were it not for the future campaigns of misinformation that the democrats and MSM are certain to perpetrate upon the public.
The White House’s statement condemning the motivations of the States resistant to expanding Medicaid is the left’s standard ad hominem tactic of dismissing the opposition’s argument by demonizing the opponent’s motivations. For who listens to Nazi’s?
Obama and his helpmates can discern when they are lying and when they are not but as their lies are in service of their ideology, which encourages lying if it advances the ideological agenda, their warped conscience is clear and so they can lie with a straight face. When Obama got caught lying, he initially expressed hesitance and uncertainty, not at being caught lying but in fear that his agenda might be damaged.
The small business Obamacare website launch has been lawlessly delayed a year. The employer mandate has lawlessly been delayed until after the midterm elections. A poll indicates overwhelming support for the fraudulent and fantastically dangerous Iran agreement.
Is anyone confident that the low IQ/Information voters will get what’s going on and turn the senate over to the Republicans next fall? I’m not.
Republicans seeking to unseat dem senators in red & purple states, and republicans now in office, need to offer a clear alternative to Obamacare. Everyone, except the welfare class and those with pre-existing conditions, will suffer. They will pay higher premiums, have reduced options, and pay higher deductibles.
Those who suffer the pain will know exactly who administered the pain and the MSM will not be able to paper over reality. It will only take 2-3% of voters to turn on the dems in red states to give the repubs a slim majority. So yes, I think there is reason for optimism.
parker, 4:14 pm — “It will only take 2-3% of voters to turn on the dems in red states to give the repubs a slim majority.”
No problemo. There are plenty of illegal votes, graveyard votes, and just plain created-out-of-thin-blue-air votes that can be readily manufactured by those who oppose us if and when the need arises.
Please; do not underestimate the resourcefulness, the determinaton, the ruthlessness, the moral depravity of those who oppose us.
“Please; do not underestimate the resourcefulness, the determinaton, the ruthlessness, the moral depravity of those who oppose us.”
MJR,
Your characterisation is accurate. But in red states I think their ability to steal elections is very limited. Sticker shock bites hard.
@Harold
“Is anyone confident that the low IQ/Information voters will get what’s going on and turn the senate over to the Republicans next fall?”
I am. That’s a reflection of the sheer magnitude of this fuck-up.
@parker
“Republicans seeking to unseat dem senators in red & purple states, and republicans now in office, need to offer a clear alternative to Obamacare.”
No they don’t. When you offer an alternative, you invite criticism and give the enemy a point to rally around. Hatred of Obamacare is quite enough by itself…more than the 2-3% you mention.
@ M J R
I agree. Voter fraud is the one thing I worry most about. If Republicans were smart (heh), they would be organizing election validation squads for 2014 to man the polls. They would also be preparing lawsuits to support fair elections.
” But that’s been postponed for fear it would be too successful and actually drive too many people to the site and cause embarrassing crashes”
The great western sage Yogi Berra was once asked whether a certain restaurant was good, he replied: “Nah, no one goes there any more it’s too crowded”.
As said up above they will do almost anything at this point. Well they have to, at least in their own eyes. One of the odd things about socialism is that it makes prisoners not only of the ones ruled by it, but also of it’s rulers.
Matt,
I typed only 2-3%…. I think it may be on the order of 10+%. At least I hope so. Offering an alternative that is simple to understand and feasible is IMO the way to go. Same goes for ‘immigration reform’. Steal their thunder and turn it back upon them. Its a game of inches. Take every inch.