Tag Archives: Epic Fail

News

White House and HHS were warned about Obamacare web site problems in April

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NBC News reports.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration, including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, was warned in April that there was insufficient time to complete testing before launching Healthcare.gov, according to a document released by a House committee investigating the website’s botched rollout.

The document, a 15-page slide show obtained by the Energy and Commerce Committee from the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., compares an ideal situation when rolling out a website such as Healthcare.gov with what developers were facing.

According to the committee, the presentation was given April 4 to a group including Sebelius and Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the HHS agency responsible for the rollout.

The document states that an ideal situation would be “end-to-end integrated operations and IT testing,” but that the situation at the time was one with “insufficient time and scope of end-to-end testing.” The document also says that a “limited initial launch” would be ideal, but that a “launch at full volume” was instead the plan.

Republicans are questioning testimony Sebelius gave to the committee during a hearing two weeks after she got the briefing, when she said development of the site was “on track and on time.”

“At this point, our energy and resources are focused on getting it up and running, and we are on track and the contracts have been led and we are monitoring it every step along the way,” Sebelius told the committee April 18. “I can tell you we are on track.”

In a statement, the chairman of the committee, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., said that Sebelius had “appeared before our committee, looked us in the eye, and repeatedly testified everything was ‘on track and on time.’”

“We now know that was not the case and the secretary was aware implementation was in trouble,” he said.

So you can put this latest Obamacare lie by HSS head Kathleen Sebelius on the pile along with the Benghazi lies and the IRS prosecution of the Tea Party lies and the gunrunning to Mexican drug cartels Fast and Furious lies. Lies, lies, lies.

In fact, CNBC is now reporting that the Obamacare web site is still not complete – it is lacking about a third of its functionality, including payment capabilities.

Excerpt:

Another day, another big, bad black eye for HealthCare.gov.

A crucial system for making payments to insurers from people who enroll in that federal Obamacare marketplace has yet to be built, a senior government IT official admitted Tuesday.

The official, Henry Chao, visibly stunned Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) when he said under questioning before a House subcommittee that a significant fraction of HealthCare.gov—30 to 40 percent of it—has yet to be constructed.

“We still need to build the payments system to make the payments [to insurance companies] in January,” testified Chao, deputy chief information officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that operates HealthCare.gov.

That so-called financial management tool was originally supposed to be part of HealthCare.gov when it launched Oct. 1, but officials later suspended its launch as part of their effort to get the consumer interface part of the site ready. The tool will, when it works, transmit the subsidies that the government is kicking in for many enrollees to offset the costs of their monthly premiums.

This is not a defect in existing functionality, this is missing functionality. This project should never have been released to Production.

As someone who has worked on electronic payments extensively, let me just tell you that this is not a simple part of a web application. Billing and payment systems are some of the most difficult parts of an insurance application, requiring in depth knowledge of the business as well as technical knowledge. So don’t expect this all to be fixed with a wave of a magic want.

News

Support plummeting for Obama and his mainstream media supporters

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Obama support plummeting among people who work for a living.

Excerpt:

During the week of June 7-13, only 46 percent of Americans overall told Gallup they approved of the job Obama is doing as president, tying for the worst week of Obama’s presidency. Two weeks ago, forty-six percent also said they approved of the job Obama is doing, and last week 47 percent said they approved.

But when the president’s approval is separated by incomes groups, it is only the lowest income bracket recorded by Gallup—those who earn less than $2,000 per month—that gives Obama a majority approval rating, with 52 percent saying they approved of the job he is doing as president.

Obama support plummeting with married couples and church-goers.

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama’s weekly approval rating is at an all-time low for his presidency, according to the Gallup Poll, and it is especially low among those 65 or older, those who are married, and those who attend church every week.

During the week of June 7-13, 46 percent of those surveyed told Gallup they approved of the job Obama was doing as president, while 46 percent said they disapproved. In its analysis of the poll results, Gallup points out that equals the lowest weekly approval rating Obama has received since his inauguration. Two weeks ago, in the period from May 24 to May 30, Obama’s approval and disapproval ratings were also at 46 percent, but a week ago (May 31-June 6) his approval increased to 47 percent, before dipping back to 46 percent again last week.

Obama’s highest weekly approval rating—67 percent—came in the week he was inaugurated (Jan. 19-25, 2009).

Support for the mainstream news media is also way down.

Excerpt:

A new poll by Rasmussen Reports shows that a majority of Americans are angry at the media.

The survey of 1,000 likely voters found that 66 percent of voters describe themselves as at least somewhat angry at the media, including 33 percent who are very angry. The poll did not differentiate, however, between news outlets such as CNN and Fox News Channel.

Voters have said consistently in surveys that they believe the media has a liberal bias and most reporters try to help the candidates they want to win. Prior to Election Day in 2008, 51 percent of voters said that most reporters were trying to help Barack Obama win the presidency.

“Americans have spoken and they are livid with the media,” L. Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, said in a statement. CNSNews.com is a part of the Media Research Center.

“A new Rasmussen poll found an astonishing two thirds of American voters are at least somewhat angry at the media, including an entire one third who said they are ‘very angry.’ That’s disturbing but unfortunately, not surprising,” Bozell said.

If they excluded Fox News from the “media”, the disapproval numbers would be a lot higher.

Commentary

Mark Steyn writes the meanest thing ever written about Obama

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From National Review. (H/T Caffeinated Thoughts)

Excerpt:

In that interview about how he hadn’t given enough interviews, he also explained to George Stephanopoulos what that wacky Massachusetts election was all about:“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” said Obama. “People are angry and they’re frustrated, not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

Got it. People are so angry and frustrated at George W. Bush that they’re voting for Republicans. In Massachusetts.

And:

The defining moment of his doomed attempt to prop up Martha Coakley was his peculiar obsession with Scott Brown’s five-year-old pickup:

“Forget the ads. Everybody can run slick ads,” the president told an audience of out-of-state students at a private school. “Forget the truck. Everybody can buy a truck.”

How they laughed! But what was striking was the thinking behind Obama’s line: that anyone can buy a truck for a slick ad, that Brown’s pickup was a prop…

[…]Howard Fineman, the increasingly loopy editor of the increasingly doomed Newsweek, took it a step further. The truck wasn’t just any old prop but a very particular kind: “In some places, there are codes, there are images,” he told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. “You know, there are pickup trucks, you could say there was a racial aspect to it one way or another.”

Ah, yes. Scott Brown has over 200,000 miles on his odometer. Man, he’s racked up a lot of coded racism on that rig. But that’s easy to do in notorious cross-burning KKK swamps like suburban Massachusetts.

I only link to this because now everything I write will seem nice by comparison.